THE INDIAN CRAFTS-

MAN : BYANANDAK.COOMARASWAMY,D.SC.
Author of " Mediaeval Sinhalese Art."
With a Foreword by C. R. ASHBEE, M.A.

PROBSTHAIN & CO.,

41, GREAT RUSSELL ST., LONDON, w.C.
1909
 CONTENTS

Chap. Page

FOREWORD v. xv.

I. THE VILLAGE CRAFTSMAN .. i

" "
The Village Community Five Trades Basis
of Society Payment of Craftsmen.

II. THE CRAFT GUILDS OF THE GREAT CITIES . .

7

Trade Guilds Guilds in Ahmadabad Guilds in

the Epics Guild Responsibility Guilds in
Buddhist India.

III. THE FEUDAL CRAFTSMAN IN INDIA AND CEYLON . . 20

Kings' Craftsmen King Craftsmen A City

Rebuilt Feudal Craftsmen in Ceylon Royal
Builders in Ceylon Temple Craftsmen in Ceylon
In Southern India Manorial Craftsmen
Villages of Craftsmen Social Status The
Kammalar.

IV. STANDARD AND REGULATION 57

A Smith's Jurisdiction The Maintenance of

Standard The Degradation of Standard Free
Trade and Protection.

V. RELIGIOUS IDEAS IN CRAFTSMANSHIP . . . . 66

Noblesse oblige Sva-dharma Karma Good and

Evil Craftsmen Visvakarma Rhythmic Archi-
tecture A Craft Ritual in Ceylon Religious
Endowments Then and Now Civilization.

VI. EDUCATION .. .. .. .. .. .. 83
The Hereditary Craftsman The Apprentice
Simplicity of Tools Leisure Art and Commerce
The Essentials.
 APPENDICES.

I. SIR GEORGE BIRDWOOD on the Indian Village Potter.

II. SIR GEORGE BIRDWOOD on Machinery and Handicraft in

India.

III. WILLIAM MORRIS on Commercial War.

IV. E. B. HAVELL on Craftsmen and Culture.

V. E. B. HAVELL on the Official Suppression of Indian

Craftsmanship at the Present Day.

VI. LAFCADIO HEARN on Craft Gods in Japan.

VII. LAFCADIO HEARN on Craft Guilds in Japan.

VIII. SER MARCO POLO on Craft Guilds in China.

IX. BHIKKU P. C. JINAVARAVAMSA on Craftsmen in Siam.

X. Municipal Institutions in Ancient India.

XI. Books recommended to the Reader.

 FOREWORD.
P\R. COOMARASWAMY'S study of the Indian
craftsman raises questions of widest
the
and deepest interest, questions that will not only
modern Eastern thought, but
give consciousness to
help us with some of the most advanced of our
Western problems. He tells us of a condition of
life among the eastern Aryans that still exists, and
he tells it in such a way as to make us feel that
there is it should not go on existing.
no reason why
Why, we ask, has this custom of the centuries,
which seems so reasonable in the East, and through
which the western Aryan once passed, changed in
one part of the world and not in the other, and
what are the merits of the change ?

If we examine our own Western economic history,

more particularly the history of England, we find
that the break up of the conditions of English

craftsmanship and the English village order, cannot

be traced back beyond the industrial revolution
of the 1 8th century, and the enclosure of the common
lands that accompanied it. Fundamentally, with
us the great change came with the introduction of
industrial machinery, and the question which forces
 FOREWORD.
upon us, when we look at
itself the picture Dr.

Coomaraswamy draws, is What : are the benefits

to our culture of the industrial machinery that has
acted in this manner ?

Trained as we are to measure everything by a

mechanical standard, it is difficult for us to see
things clearly, to get a correct focus. We are apt
to forget that our view is biassed, that we attach
a disproportionate value to the productions of
machinery, and that a vast number, perhaps 60
per cent., of these productions are not, as is

generally supposed, labour-saving, health-giving

and serviceable to our general life and culture, but
"
the reverse. It is questionable," said John Stuart
"
Mill half a century ago, whether all the labour-

saving machinery has yet lightened the day's labour

"
of a single human being and the years that have
;

followed his death seem not only to have further

borne out his statement, but the people themselves
who are being exploited by mechanical conditions
are beginning to find it out.

For machinery is only a measure of human

force, not an increase of it and it is questionable
;

whether, owing to the abuse of machinery, the

destruction and waste it brings may not equal the

gain it yields. Wonderful are the great ships, and

the winged words from one side of the globe to the
other, wonderful is the consciousness that comes

vi.
 FOREWORD.
to us from those things, and from rapid movement,
and from our power of destruction, but we may
pay even too high a price for the boon of progress.
It behoves us to ask, at least, what the price is,

and if it be a fair one. Perchance, in our thought-

lessness we
have, like the boy in the fairy tale,
bartered away the cow for a handful of beans ;

well, there may be much virtue in the beans, but

was not the cow good too ? A more reasonable
view oflife and the progress of Western civilization
is
making us see that the pitiful slums of our great
cities are not a necessary corollary to the great

ships ;
that a nicer, saner regulation of industry
will mean that the rapid displacement of human
labour, and the misery it brings, may be graduated
and softened ;
that it is not necessary for 30 per
cent, of the population to die in pauperism, as is

the case in England at present that it is short-;

sighted and unwise to paralyze invention and skill

and individuality by unregulated machine develop-
ment, and that our present gauge of the excellence
in all these things their saleability cannot possibly
continue to be a permanent gauge.
It is when Western civilization is brought face
to face with the results of other cultures, Eastern
cultures, when the stages of its progress are resumed
from the points of view of other religions, when
Japan, for instance, rejects or chooses what she

Vll.
 FOREWORD.
needs to her a fighting force, when India
make
seeks to form, out of an imposed educational

system, a political consciousness of her own when ;

Persia and Turkey are in the act of creating con-

stitutions on the Western model, that we in the
West come to realize that the stages of progress,
as we understand them, are not obligatory. Some
of them may be skipped.
So it is with industry, and the conditions of life
induced by industrial machinery, much of it may
be skipped. And it is the continuous existence of
an order like the Indian village community, which,
when brought into relation with Western progress,
seems to prove this. We West have passed
in the

through the condition of the Aryan village com-

munity. The conditions Dr. Coomaraswamy
describes in India and Ceylon are very similar to
the conditions that prevailed in mediaeval England,

Germany and France they did not seem nearly

;

so strange to Knox, writing in Stuart times, as they

do to The 500 years that have passed between
us.

our middle ages and the growth of the great cities

of machine industry may have proved that the
destruction of the Western village community was
inevitable, has not proved that where the
but it

village community still exists it need necessarily

be destroyed. Indeed, we are finding out in the
West that if the village tradition were still living

viii.
 FOREWORD.
it could still be utilized ;
we are even seeking to
set up something like it in its place. For the great
city of mechanical industry has come to a point
when its
disintegration There are
is inevitable.

signs that the devolution has already begun, both

"
in England and America. The cry of back to the
"
land," the plea for a more reasonable life," the
revival of the handicrafts, the education of hand
and eye, the agricultural revival, the German
"
ackerbau," the English small holding, our technical
schools, all these things are indications of a need
for finding something, if not to take the place of
the village community, at least to bring once

again into life those direct, simple, human

and out-of-door things of which mechanical
industry has deprived our working population.
These things are necessary to our life as a

people, and we shall have to find them some-

how. Dr. Coomaraswamy does show how well to

they still exist in great and

measure in the East,

it may be that the East, in her wisdom, and with her

profound conservative instinct, will not allow them

to be destroyed. She has, as Sir Geo. Birdwood puts
it, let the races and the peoples for 3,000 years

come and pass by she may have taken this from

;

one and that from another, but the fundamental

democratic order of her society has remained, and
it appears improbable, on the face of it, that we

ix.
 FOREWOOD.
English shall materially change it when so many
others before us have left it undisturbed.
Indeed, there seems to be no reason, on the face
of it, why we should aspire to do so. Some change
we are certainly bringing, and bringing uncon-
sciously, but a curious and suggestive thought
it is

that the spiritual reawakening in England, which

goes now by the name of the higher culture, now by

the name of Socialism, which has been voiced in
our time by Ruskin and Morris, which has expressed
itself inmovements like the arts and crafts, or is
revealed in the paintings of the Pre-
inspired
Raphaelites, demands just such a condition as in
India our commercialisation is destroying. The
spiritual reawakening in the West is appealing for
a social condition in which each man shall have
not only an economic but a spiritual status in the
society in which he lives, or as some of us would
prefer to put it, he shall have a stable economic
status in order that he may have a spiritual status
as well.
It is such a condition that still exists in India,

where society is organized, as Dr. Coomaraswamy

"
shows, upon a basis of personal responsibility and
co-operation," instead of, as with us, upon a basis
of contract and competition. Even if we admit
that the change in the Aryan of the West from the
one basis to the other has been necessary in order

x.
 FOREWORD.
to produce the conditions of modern progress, the
results of our civilization, in short, the
scientific

great ships, it may yet be that the spiritual re-

awakening that is beginning to stir the dry bones
of our Western materialism may yet leave the
ancient East fundamentally unchanged, and bring
us once again into some kindred condition through
our contact with her.
In the profoundly interesting address of the

English artists in 1878, which bore the names of

Morris, Burne- Jones, Millais, Edwin Arnold, Walter
Crane and others, there is an appeal to the Govern-
ment on behalf of Indian Arts and Crafts against
the English commercialism upon the
effects of

production of Indian craftsmanship.

" "
At a time," say the signatories, when these
productions are getting to be daily more and more
valued in Europe, these sources are being dried
up and goods which ought to be common
in Asia,
in the market are now becoming rare treasures for
museums and the cabinets of rich men. This result
seems to us the reverse of what commerce ought
to aim at."
But has commerce any aim ? Is it as yet more
than a blind force ? The experience of 30 years
has shown that this appeal of the English artists
might have been as eloquently made on behalf of
English as of Indian craftsmanship. For, indeed,

xi.
 FOREWORD.
the appeal is less against English Governmental
action than against the conditions imposed upon
the world by the development of industrial
machinery, directed by commercialism. Industrial

machinery which blindly displacing the purpose

is

of hand and destroying the individuality of human

production and commercialism, which is setting

;

up one standard only, the quantitative standard,

the standard of saleability.
To compass the destruction of commercialism
and regulate and delimit the province of industrial
machinery for the benefit of mankind, is now the
work of the Western reformer. The spiritual re-
awakening with us is taking that shape.

It is probable that in this effort of the Western

artists, workmen, and reformers for the recon-

struction of society on a saner and more spiritual
basis, the East can help us even more than we shall
help the East. What would we not give in England
" "
for a little of that workshop service which Dr.
Coomaraswamy describes, in place of our half-baked

evening classes in County Council Schools ? What,

in our effort at the revival of handicrafts in the
"
decaying country-side, for some of those religious
"
trade union villages of which Sir George Birdwood

speaks ?

There has come over Western civilization, in the

i
last 25 years, a green sickness, a disbelief, an unrest ;

xii.
 FOREWORD.
it is not despondency, for in the finer minds it takes
the form of an intense spiritual hopefulness but ;

it takes the form also of a profound disbelief in

the value of the material conditions of modern

progress, a longing to sort the wheat from the
chaff, the serviceable from the useless, a desire to
turn from mechanical industry and its wastefulness,
and to look once more to the human hand, to be
once again with Mother Earth.

"
It behoves us," said Heraclitus, in the time of
"
the beginnings of Hellenic civilization, it

behoves us to follow the common reason of

the world ; yet, though there is a common
reason in the world, the majority live as

though they possessed a wisdom peculiar each

unto himself alone." This is so profoundly modern
that it might almost be a comment
upon English
or American industrialism, did we not know that
it
applied equally to the peculiar intellectual
individualism of Hellas, which disintegrated and
"
destroyed her culture. But the common reason
of the world," if the words of Heraclitus are to be
taken at their face value, includes the reason of
the East, and with it the social order that has
stood there unshaken for 3,000 years, and hence
stood there long before the days of Heraclitus
himself.

xui.
 FOREWORD.
For our immediate purpose, too, the purpose of
" "
this book, the common reason of the world
includes and defines the Indian craftsman and the
Indian village community it
gives them a definite
;

and necessary place not only in the Indian order

of things, not only in the culture of the East,but
in the world. shows them to be reasonable and
It

right, and it shows them, what is still more

important, to be the counterpart one of the other.

Here once more we are learning from the East.
The English craftsman and the English village are
passing, or have passed away and it ; is only in
quite recent times that we have discovered that they,
too, are the counterpart one of the other. Industrial

machinery, blindly misdirected, has destroyed them

both, and recent English land legislation has been
trying, with allotment and small-holdings acts, to
re-establish the broken village life. Those of us,
however, that have studied the Arts and Crafts in
their town and country conditions, are convinced
that the Small Holding Problem is possible of
solution only by some system of co-operation, and
if some forms of craftsmanship are simultaneously
"
revived and added to it. Speak to the earth and
"
it shall teach thee that is an old lesson, and it
;

is true not only of England, but of all Western

countries that have been touched by the green-

sickness of industrial machinery. With us in the

xiv.
 FOREWORD.
West it is the newest of new ideas that the arts and
crafts and the revival of agriculture are the corollary
of one another. In India they always appear to
have thought this, and to have held by the truth-
I never heard of the god Visvakarma, the god

of the Arts and Crafts, before I learned of him

from Dr. Coomaraswamy. But he seems strangely

like a personification of that Platonic idea of
abstract beauty which for so many centuries
has haunted the Western mind. Whether it be
Plato or Plotinus, Pico della Mirandola or Rossetti,
ever and again in the great periods of our Western

development the idea recurs. Who knows, perhaps

Visvakarma is the god for whom we in the West,
in our spiritual reawakening, are in search ; possibly
he can help us !

C. R. ASHBEE.

xv.
 "
The hand of a craftsman engaged in
his craft is always pure." Manu.
" Those that are craftsmen of the
people are
welcome over all the wide earth." Odyssey.
" All these trust to their hands :

And everyone is wise in his work.

Without these cannot a city be inhabited." Ecclesiasticus.
 CHAPTER I.

THE VILLAGE CRAFTSMAN.

T NDIAN society presents to us no more fascinating

picture than that of the craftsman as an organic
element in the national life. Broadly speaking,
he is associated with that life in one of three ways :

as a member of a village community ;

as a member
of a guild of merchant craftsmen in a great city ;

or as the feudal servant of the king, or chieftain of

a temple. First let us enquire into the position of
the lesser craftsmen, within the agricultural village

community.
The craftsmen thus working within the village
community, are there ina perpetual
virtue of
contract whereby their services are given to the
husbandmen, from whom they receive in return
certain privileges and payments in kind. Each has
his own duties to perform.
The woodwork of ploughs and other implements
is made and repaired by the carpenter, the cultivator

merely supplying the wood the blacksmith supplies

;

all the iron parts of the implements, and repairs

them when necessary, the cultivator supplying the

iron and charcoal, and working the bellows and ;
 THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY.
the potter* supplies each cultivator with the
earthenware he needs. The list of artisans is not
always the same, only those most indispensable
to the community being found in all cases, such as
the carpenter and blacksmith, potter and washer-
man. Others may be the barber-surgeon, messenger
and scavenger, astrologer, or dancing girl. It will
be seen that not all of these are technically crafts-
men, but all occupy their position in virtue of the
professional service which they render to the
agricultural community. This is well illustrated by
a verse of a fifteenth century Sinhalese poemf
dealing with the origin of caste as a method of
division of labour. The verse in question emphasizes
the indispensable character of the services of the

carpenter, tailor, washerman, barber and leather-

worker.
"
Both weddings and funerals of Rajas,
for the
Brahmans, cultivators, merchants, S'udras and all
men the carpenter giving chairs, bedsteads,
pavilions and the like the tailor sewing and giving
jackets and hats the washer spreading awnings
and bringing clean clothes the barber cutting the
hair and beard, trimmmg the face and adorning it

* See i.
Appendix
f Janavamsaya, H. Nevill, Taprobanian,
trans, by
Vol. L, 1886, pp. 74-93 and 103-114.
 THE FIVE TRADES.
the leather-worker stitching leather for the feet ;

thus these five are needed (alike) for the wedding

and the funeral."
They are, indeed, in Ceylon, often spoken of as
"
the five servants."
It is mentioned in the Mahavamsa that the heads
of the five tradeswere chosen as messengers to
carry a welcome from Kitti Sirimegha to his son

Parakrama, afterwards Parakrama Ba.hu the Great.

We thus catch a glimpse of the social status and
"
importance of the five trades," but it is not quite
clear whether these are the five just referred to,
or the five sections of the artificers proper
probably the former.
In Maratha villages, the craftsmen and menial
servants formed a guild or institution, regulating
the customary duties and remuneration of the
craftsmen and servants, and called bar a balute in as
much as the full number of persons composing
this body was reckoned at twelve. They included
the craftsmen the inferior servants, of low caste,
;

as barbers and scavengers and the Bhat, or village

;

priest. They were all headed by the carpenter, who

is called the Patel of the artizans, and decided all

their disputes.*

*"The system has, indeed, been a good deal broken

up in British districts,where work by contract and
competition has superseded customary service. But
 BASIS OF SOCIETY.

The presence of the craftsmen in the midst of a

simple agricultural society made possible the self-

contained life of the community, so striking a feature
of the Indian village.

Living in a society organised on the basis of

personal relations and duties,* which descended in
each family from generation to generation, instead
of belonging to a society founded on contract and

competition, their payment was provided for in

various ways, of which money payment was the
least important and most unusual. The amount of

money in circulation in the villages was, indeed,

almost negligible, barter and personal service taking

in the native States, where the innovating forces are

less strong, the institution still flourishes, to the
" great
satisfaction of all concerned." The Indian Raiyat
as a Member of the Village Community" by Sir W.
Wedderburn, London, 1883.
*
Interesting light on village self-government is
obtainable from the series of Chola inscriptions
(ca. 900-940 A.D.) from the village of Ukkal, near
Conjeevaram. The village was governed by an
assembly (sabha or mahasabha), sub-divided into
"
several committees. These were the great men
"
elected for theyear" the great men in charge of
the tank" and " those in charge of gardens" The
transactions of the assembly were put in writing by
an officer who had the title of arbitrator (madhyastha),
" "
and who is also in one case called accountant
(karanattan}. Hultzsch, South Indian Inscriptions,
Vol. XXIX, pp. 3, 28, etc.
 PAYMENT OF CRAFTSMEN.
the place of money payments. Wealth was hoarded
if at all, rather in the form of jewellery than of

money. Prosperity consisted in having several

years' provisions of grain in one's granary. Anything
of the nature of a shop or store was unknown.
The payment of craftsmen was either a payment
in kind, or a grant of land, besides perquisites on
special occasions. For their customary services, the
craftsmen were repaid at harvest-time, receiving a
fixed proportion of sheaves of grain from the crop
collected on the threshing floor, or they might be

given a share of the communal land. In the last

case, it followed that every man was a cultivator
and directly dependent on the land for his subsistence
whether he were a husbandman, a goldsmith, or a
washerman by caste. To take, at random, a few
examples of these payments In the Gujrah district
:

of the Punjab, the village servants are paid by

grain fees, so many bundles of the crop of wheat
or barley, each bundle of such a size as may be tied

by a string of three straws in length. In the villages

of another province (N. W.
P.) the following persons
" "
received each a share of grain for each plough
of cultivated land in the village the barber,:

washerman, carpenter, blacksmith and cowherd'

"
besides a further allowance as an extra when the
business of the threshing-floor was over."* Thus, in
* '*
Indian Village Community "p. 17.
Baden-Powell,
 PAYMENT OF CRAFTSMEN.
"
Munda villages, the lohar, or blacksmith, gets
one kat of paddy and three karais for every plough
in the village, and is also paid two or three annas
for every new phar or plough-share in a very few ;

villages he holds half a paw a of land rent free."*

Almost always, too, there are set apart shares
for religious and charitable purposes, before the
remainder of the crop is divided between tenant
and landlord, or removed by the tenant proprietor
himself. f In Ceylon if a man wanted a new cloth
he gave cotton from his clearing, and a present of
grain to the weaver. Sometimes the craftsman was
paid in this kind of way whenever his services were
required, sometimes he received a perquisite only
on special occasions very much as in England
;

the postman, employed by the community, receives

" "
an annual Christmas box from each individual
at whose house he delivers letters. At New Year,
for example, it was customary, in some parts of

Ceylon, to tie up a coin in each garment sent to the

wash ; and the washerman had other perquisites

beside ; and so with the other servants and crafts-
men of the village.

* H. H. Census Ethn.
Risley, of India, App.,
P. 158.
t Baden-Powell, loc. cit., p. 17.
 CHAPTER II.

THE CRAFT GUILDS OF THE GREAT CITIES.

^THE typical Hindu village consists exclusively of

husbandmen but as husbandry and manu-
;

facture cannot exist without each other, the village

had to receive a number of artisans as members of
'
its governing body. But they are all strangers
within the gate,' who reside in a village solely for
the convenience of the husbandmen on a sort of
service contract. It is a perpetual contract, but in

the lapse of 3,000 years, the artisans have constantly

terminated their connection with a village, or have
had to provide for sons in some other place, and

they at once sought their livelihood in the towns

which began to spring up everywhere round the
centres of government, and of the foreign commerce
of the country. It is in this way that the great

pc ly technical cities of India have been formed."

Let us pass on to a picture of the craftsman as a
member of a great guild of merchant craftsmen,
controllers of the wealth of mighty cities and once
of the markets of the world.
*'
of interests would naturally draw
Community
together the skilled immigrants of these cities in
trades unions the bonds of which in India, as was
;
 TRADE GUILDS.

also the case in ancient Egypt, are rendered

practically indissoluble by the force of caste. . . .

The trade guilds of the great polytechnical cities

of India are not, however, always exactly coincident
with the sectarian or ethnical caste of a particular
caste of artisans. Sometimes the same trade is
pursued by men and its guild
of different castes,

generally includes every member of the trade it

represents without strict reference to caste. The

government of the guilds or unions is analogous to
that of the village communities and castes, that is,

by hereditary officers. Each separate guild is

managed by a court aldermen or mahajans,

of
' 5

literally great gentlemen. Nominally it is com-

posed of all the freemen of the caste, but a special

position is allowed to the seths, lords, or chiefs of

the guild, who are ordinarily two in number, and
hold their position by hereditary right. The only
other office-bearer is a salaried clerk or gumasta.
11
Membership in the guild is also hereditary, but
new-comers may on the payment
be admitted into it

of an entrance fee, which in Ahmedabad amounts

to 2 for paper-makers, and 50 for tinsmiths. No

unqualified person can remain in or enter a guild.

It isnot the practice to execute indentures of
apprenticeship, but every boy born in a working
caste of necessity learns his father's handicraft, and
when he has mastered it, at once takes his place as

8
 TRADE GUILDS.
an hereditary freeman of his caste or trade-guild ;

his father, or if he be an orphan, the young man

himself, giving a dinner to the guild on the occasion.

In large the guilds command great influence.
cities

The Nagar-Seth, or City Lord of Ahmedabad, is

the titular head of the guilds, and the highest
all

personage in the city,and is treated as its repre-

sentative by the Government. In ordinary times
he does not interfere in the internal affairs of the
guilds, their management being left to the chief
alderman of each separate guild, called the Chautano-
Seth, or 'lord of the market.' . . .The funds of
the guilds of Western India, where they prevail

chiefly among the Vaishnavas and Jainas of Gujarat,

are for the greater part spent on charities, and

particularly charitable hospitals for sick and help-

less domestic animals and in part also on the
:

temples of the Maharajas of the Wallabhacharya

sect of Vaishnavas, and on guild feasts. A favourite
device for raising money is for the men of a craft
or trade to agree on a certain day to shut all their

shops but one. The right to keep open this one is

then put up to auction, and the amount bid goes
to the guild fund."*
The guilds likewise regulated the hours of labour,
and the amount of work to be done in their
* Sir "
George Birdwood, Industrial Arts of India"
1880, pp. 137-140-
 TRADE GUILDS.
workshops, by strict bye-laws, enforced by the levy

of fines. But this old order is passing away.

'*
Under British rule, which secures the freest
exercise of individual energy and initiative, the

authority of the trade-guilds in India has necessarily

been relaxed, to the marked detriment of those
handicrafts, the perfection of which depends on
hereditary processes and skill. The overwhelming
importations of British manufactures also is even
more detrimental to their prosperity and influence,
for it has in many places brought wholesale ruin
on the hereditary native craftsmen, and forced them
into agriculture and even domestic service. But
the by the stubborn resistance, further
guilds,
stimulated by caste prejudice, which they oppose
to all innovations, still continue, in this forlorn
way, to serve a beneficial end, in maintaining, for
probably another generation, the traditional excel-
lence of the sumptuary arts of India against the
fierce and merciless competition of the English
manufacturers. The guilds are condemned by many
for fixing the hours of labour and the amount to
be done in them by strict bye-laws, the slightest
infringement of which is punished by severe fines,
which are the chief source of their income. But the
object of these rules is to give the weak and
unfortunate the same chance in life as others more
favoured by nature. These rules naturally follow

10
 GUILDS IN AHMADABAD.
from the theocratic conceptions which have governed
the whole organisation of social life in India, and
it is incontrovertible that the unrestricted develop-
ment of the competitive impulse in modern life,

particularly in the
pursuit of personal gain, is
absolutely antagonistic to the growth of the senti-
ment of humanity and of real religious convictions
among men."*
The principles upon which they acted were (

indeed, altogether socialistic, and

an realised as

accomplished fact many of the ideals for which the

European worker is still fighting. Thus the guild

both prevented undue competition amongst its
members, and negotiated with other guilds in case
of dispute amongst the craftsmen.
"
In 1873, for example, a number of the brick-
layers in Ahmedabad could not find work. Men of
this class sometimes added to their daily wages by
rising very early in the morning, and working over-
time. But when several families complained that
they could not get employment, the bricklayers'
guild met, and decided that as there was not enough
work for all, no member should be allowed to work
in extra hours. f . The trade-guild or caste
. .

* Sir
George Birdwood, loc. cit., p. 139.

f Noincident could better illustrate the close

relation of the industrial problems here treated of,
and those in the modern West. For at the " Right to

II
 GUILDS IN AHMADABAD.
allows none of its members to starve. It thus acts
as a mutual assurance society and takes the place
of a poor law in India. The severest social penalty
which can be inflicted upon a Hindu is to be put out
of his caste."*
The following abbreviated details of the organisa-
tion of the Guilds in Ahmadabad are taken from
the Imperial Gazetteer of India, Vol. V., p. 101 :

"
In consequence of the importance of its manu-
factures of silk and cotton, the system of caste or
trade unions is more fully developed in Ahmedabad
than in any other part of Gujarat. Each of the
different castes of traders, manufacturers and
artisans forms its own trade guild, to which all

heads of households belong. Every member has a

right to vote, and decisions are passed by a

majority. In cases where one industry has many
distinct branches, there are several guilds. Thus
among potters, the workers of bricks, of tiles, and
of earthen jars, are for trade purposes distinct ;

and in the great weaving trade, those who prepare

the different articles of silk and cotton, form distinct

"
Work Conference at the Guildhall, of December,
1908, one of the resolutions passed and afterwards
laid before the Prime Minister, included a condemna-
tion of overtime, based on the very sound principle
laid down above.
* Sir W. W. Hunter, "
Brief History of the Indian
Peoples," 1903, ed. p. 98.

12
 GUILDS IN AHMADABAD.
associations. The objects of the guilds are to

regulate competition among the members, e.g., by

prescribing days or hours during which work shall
not be done. The decisions of the guilds are enforced
by fines. If the offender refuses to pay, and all
members of the guild belong to one caste, the
offender is put out of caste. If the guild contains
men of different castes, the guild uses its influence
with other guilds to prevent the recusant member
from getting work. Besides the amount received
from fines, the different guilds draw an income by
levying fees on any person beginning to practise
his craft. This custom prevails in the cloth and
other industries, but no fee is paid by potters,
carpenters and other inferior artisans. An exception
is also made in the case of a son
succeeding his
father, when nothing has to be paid. In other
cases the amount varies, proportion to the
in

importance of the trade, from Rs. 50 to Rs. 500.

The revenue derived from these fees, and from fines,
isexpended in parts to the members of the guild,
and in charity. Charitable institutions, or sadavart,
where beggars are fed daily, are maintained in
Ahmedabad at the expense of the trade guilds."
How long ago the craftsmen were organized into
these great municipal guilds, is suggested by a
well-known passage in the Ramayana, describing
the procession of citizens who went out into the

13
 GUILDS IN THE EPICS.
forest with Bharata in search of Rama. The gem-
cutters, potters, weavers, armourers, ivory- workers,
"
well-known goldsmiths," together with many
others, the foremost merchants as well as the citizens
of all classes went out to search for Rama ;
such a
procession as even in the nineteenth century*
perhaps even to-day, might be drawn together in
one of the great merchant cities of Western India.
we read in the Harivamsa,*
Again, of the
preparations made for the royal family and citizens
of Mathura to witness the contest between Krishna
and Balarama and the king's champions.
"
The amphitheatre was filled by the citizens,
anxious to behold the games. The place of assembly
was supported by octagonal painted pillars, fitted
up with terraces, and doors, and bolts, with windows,
circular or crescent-shaped, and accommodated with
seats with cushions,"
and so on and then we are told that
;

"
The pavilions of the different companies and
corporations,vast as mountains, were decorated
with banners, bearing upon them the implements
and emblems of the several crafts."
It is interesting to note also how much all this

splendour depended upon these very crafts whose

*
Quoted by Wilson, Vishnu Pur ana, Vol. V., p.
27.

14
 GUILDS IN THE EPICS.

position was thus recognized and honoured ; for the

tale goes on to say that

"
The chambers of the inhabitants of the inner

apartments shone near at hand, bright with gold,

and painting, and net- work of gems they were ;

richly decorated with precious stones, were enclosed

below with costly hangings, and ornamented above
with spires and banners."

Compare with this, also, such a description as

the following account of the preparations for the
marriage of a princess (in the seventh century, A.D.) :

"
From every county were summoned companies
of skilled artists .
Carpenters, presented with
. .

white flowers, unguents, and clothes, planned out

the marriage altar. Workmen mounted on ladders,
with brushes upheld in their hands and pails of
plaster on their shoulders, whitened the top of the
street wall of the palace. . . . The outer terraces
resounded with the din of gold-workefs engaged
in hammering gold. Plasterers were beplastered
with showers of sand which fell over them from
freshly erected walls. A group of skilled painters
painted auspicious scenes. Multitudes of modellers
moulded clay figures of fishes, tortoises, crocodiles,
cocoanuts, plantains and betel trees. Even kings
girt up their loins and busied themselves in carrying

15
 GUILD RESPONSIBILITY.
out decorative work set as tasks by their
*
sovereign."
Another interesting mention of craftsmen in

procession is found in the Mahavamsa, where we

are told that following the officials in the annual
"
Perahera at Kandy, were people of strange
countries, and men skilled in divers tongues, and
numerous artificers and handicraftsmen." The
period spoken of is the latter part of the eighteenth

century.
I have not been able to hear of any accounts of
guilds in Persia, where they must have existed
from the earliest times. It is reported, however,
that when in the recent troubles 14,000 people in
Teheran took refuge in the foreign legations, each
guild organised with perfect ease and order the
policeing and feeding of its own people. This makes
one realise how powerful an element in social
stability is represented by the guilds even at the
present day.
The nature of guild responsibility^ is well indicated
in some of the Tan j ore inscriptions. A common
form of pious offering consisted in the dedication
of a lamp, providing for a lamp to be kept
i.e.,

continually burning before a certain image. This

* Sana's '
Harsha Carita,' Trans, by E. B. Cowell
and F. W. Thomas, p. 124.
| See also Appendix VII

16
 GUILD RESPONSIBILITY.
was generally arranged by the payment of a sum
of money, or more often by the gift of a certain
number of sheep or cattle to the guild of shepherds,
who undertook to provide the necessary oil in

perpetuo. The payment for thus maintaining one

sacred lamp was 96 ewes, or 48 cows, or 16 she-
"
buffaloes. The shepherds who received the
cattle, themselves and their people, viz., their
relations, and the relations of the latter, had to

supply ghi to the treasury of the Lord, as long as

the sun and moon endure, at the daily rate of one
urakku of ghi . . for each sacred lamp."*
The manner in which the shepherds as a guild
bound themselves jointly as security for an in.

dividual contractor is as characteristic of true

guild
methods as their solidarity in the defence of their
own interests would have been. In an inscription
of Rajendra Soladeva at Tanjore, we have a
detailed account of this acceptance of responsibility
"
by the guild of shepherds We," runs the
:

"
inscription, all the following shepherds of this

village .... agreed to become security for Eran

Sattan, a shepherd of this village, (who) had re-
ceived 90 ewes of this temple in order to supply

ghi for burning one perpetual lamp. We shall

cause the shepherd E.S. to supply daily to one
perpetual lamp one ulakku of ghi ... If he dies,
* Indian Inscriptions, Vol.
Hultzsch, South II.,
part III., p. 251.
 GUILDS IN BUDDHIST INDIA.
absconds, or gets into prison, fetters (or) chains,
we all these aforesaid persons, are bound to supply

ghi for burning the holy lamp as long as the sun

and moon endure." This inscription ends with the
name of a local merchant, who may have been the
donor of the lamp.
The origin of the guild has not yet been worked
out in any detail. With regard to the existence
of actual guilds in early Buddhist times, the Jatakas

give us but little information. The craftsmen

associated in villages no doubt had their own laws
and customs, tantamount to guild regulations, but
of guilds in the great cities we hear little. In the
Nigrodha Jataka, however, it is stated that to the

king's treasurer was given alsothe judgeship of

" " "
all th guilds (sabbaseninam). Before that,"
"
says the Jataka, no such office existed, but there
was this office ever after." In the Uraga Jataka,
a guild quarrel (senibhandana) is mentioned, between
two men in the king's service, who were heads of
guilds (seni-pamukha).* Such evidence belongs,
however, to the period of redaction of the Jatakas
rather than to the times described in them. There
can be no doubt, however, that at least the germ of
the guild system existed at a very early time in
the form of co-operative associations within the

* But in Rouse's translation

of this Jataka, the
quarrel is between two soldiers, not guild masters.

18
 EARLY REFERENCES.
merchant community.* The merchant (setthi)
himself was at a very early time a man of much
wealth and social importance. He was the principal
representative of the householder (grahapati) class,
the typical burgher in the great town. The word
setthi in some cases seems to imply a private trader,
in others, a representative of commerce, holding
an official position at court. f Many such merchants
were evidently exceedingly wealthy of one we ;

are told that goods were brought to him in a caravan

of no less than 500 wagons. But any detailed

enquiry into the position of the trader, as a

middleman, and not himself a craftsman, would
be exceeding the limits of the subject of the present
volume.
In slightly later literature the existence of guilds
is more clearly indicated. In the Dharma sutras
it is stated that the farmers, merchants, cowherds
and money-lenders had bye-laws of their own.
applicable to their communities, and having due
legal validity. In later law books, guilds (sreni)
are often mentioned, e.g., Manu, viii. 41, where it

isstated that the king must examine and establish

the laws of the guilds. Likewise in the epics, the

guilds are recognised as an important factor in

industrial and political life.f
* " "
Pick, Indien zu Buddha's Zeit t pp. 172-177.
f Fick t loc. cit., p. 172.
 CHAPTER III.

THE FEUDAL CRAFTSMAN IN INDIA AND CEYLON.

I ET us turn to look at the Indian craftsman as

the feudal servant of the king, a baron, or
of a religious foundation. In the so-called dark
ages of the East and of the West, the patronage of
art and craft by kings was a matter of course, and
no court was complete, lacking the state craftsmen.
He would have seemed a strange king who knew
nought of art and craft, and cared less. Even Alfred
the Great, amidst the cares of protecting his
all

troubled land, found time to care for craftsmanship

and craftsmen, especially goldsmiths, and we are
all familiar with the Alfred jewel that bears the
" "
legend, Alfred had me made ; and this interest in
jewellery reminds us of the Eastern proverb, that
"
asks who but the Raja and the goldsmith should
know the value of the jewel ? " Still earlier evidence
of the traditional royal interest in craft in the West
"
may be gathered from such books as the Mabin-
ogion." When Kilhwch rode to Arthur's hall and
"
sought admittance, I will not open," said the
" " "
porter. Wherefore not ? asked Kilhwch. The
knife is in the meat, and the drink is in the horn,"
"
said the porter, and there is revelry in Arthur's

20
 KINGS' CRAFTSMEN.
hall, and none may enter therein but the son of a

king of a privileged country, or a craftsman bringing

his craft."

So, too, in ancient Ireland we find it said to a

"
similar applicant at the king's door, no one without
an art comes into Tara."*
Still later on, in the dark ages, we find, as one may
"
learn from Professor Lethaby's Westminster
Abbey and the King's Craftsmen," that the royal
masons, carpenters, smiths and painters were
attached to the palace as much as a matter of course
as the chief butler and cook, and that under the
chiefmaster-mason or carpenter a body of skilled
journeymen was permanently engaged. We are
wiser now, of course, and know that only the chief
butler and cook are essential to the royal dignity ;

the craftsmen have gone, and only the butler, the

cook and the clerk remain. Perhaps it is only
worldly wisdom after all.
The royal craftsman in the East, however, is our
immediate interest, and to him we must return.
We find him well established at a very early
date. In the reign of Asoka (275-231 B.C.),
"
Artisans were regarded as being in a special
manner devoted to the royal service, and capital
punishment was inflicted on any person who
* "
In Lugh of the Long Hand" version in Lady
"
Gregory's Gods and Fighting Men," 1904, p. 17.

21
 KINGS' CRAFTSMEN.
impaired the efficiency of a craftsman by causing
the loss of a hand or an eye. Ship-builders
. . .

and armour-makers were salaried public servants,

and were not permitted, it is said, to work for any
private person. The woodcutters, carpenters,
blacksmiths and miners were subject to special
supervision."*
Upon this subject of the regulation of the crafts
I shallhave more to say later.
Passing over a millenium and a half without
endeavouring to trace the royal craftsman's foot-
steps one by one, we come to the time of the great
Moghal Emperors in the North. From the Ain-i-
Akbari or Institutes of the Emperor Akbar, one of
the three great rulers in whose mind the conception
of a united India had taken shape, and one of the

greatest rulers that the world has seen, we are told

of the skilled Indian and foreign craftsmen main-
tained in the palaces of the Moghals.
Akbar had in his service many artists, to
"
the end that they might vie with each other in
fame, and become eminent by their productions."
Weekly he inspected the work of every artist, and
gave due reward for special excellence. He also

personally superintended the making of the weapons

forged and decorated in the armoury. He was very
fond of shawls, of which many kinds were made
* Vincent "
Smith, Early History of India" p. 120.

22
 KINGS' CRAFTSMEN.
in the palace,and classified according to date, value,
colour and weight. He had also jewellers and
damasceners, inlay ers and enamellers, engravers and
lapidaries, and craftsmen of all kinds. It is to be

observed that all this did not represent in Akbar,

any more than it did in Alfred, the mere luxury of

an idle or weak monarch, but belonged to a definite
conception of the kingly state and duty recognized
by one of the greatest rulers the world has seen.
"
His majesty taking great delight in, and having
patronised this art from the commencement of his
reign, has caused it to arrive at high perfection.
With that view, this department was established,
in order that a number of artists being collected

together, might vie with each other for fame, and

become eminent by their productions. Every week
the daroghas and tepookchies bring to his majesty
the performance of every artist, when, in proportion
to their merits, they are honoured with premiums,
and their salaries are increased."
"
Through the attention of his majesty, a variety
of new manufactures are established in this country ;
and the cloths fabricated in Persia, Europe and
China have become cheap and plenty. The skill
of the manufacturers has increased with their
number, for his majesty has made himself
acquainted with the theory and practice in every
stage of the business, so as to be able to discover
the merits of the workmen ; thus by bringing the
23
 KINGS' CRAFTSMEN.
arts into credit, the natives are encouraged to give

application, and they speedily gain a complete

knowledge of their profession."
The Emperor Akbar took a personal delight in
painting ;
he is reported to have said that
"
There are many that hate painting, but such
men I dislike. It appears to me as if a painter had

quite peculiar means of recognizing God, for in

sketching anything that has life, and devising its
limbs one after the other, he must feel that he
cannot bestow a soul upon his work, and is forced
to think of God, the only giver of life, and will thus
increase his knowledge."
No wonder that the crafts flourished under
such conditions and it is very certain that Musal-
;

man puritanism did not, as a matter of fact, injure

^ndian art in the way that the contact with Western
civilization has injured it. Just as in England the
churches have suffered more from churchwardens
than from puritans, so Indian art has suffered more
from philistines of the Macaulay type than from
iconoclasts.
The thing which perhaps most interests us from
the craftsman's point of view is the security and

hereditary character of his position. Sir John

Chardin tells us of
kings the the Persian in

seventeenth century that they

"
entertain a large number of excellent master-
workmen, who have a salary and daily rations for

24
 KINGS' CRAFTSMEN.
all their lives, and are provided with all the materials
for their work. They receive a present and an
increase of salary for every fine work they produce."
Sir George Birdwood says :

"
In the East the princes and great nobles and
wealthy gentry, who are the chief patrons of these
grand fabrics, collect together in their own houses
and palaces all who gain reputation for special skill
in their manufacture. These men receive a fixed
salary and daily rations, and are so little hurried
in their work that they have plenty of time to
execute private orders also. Their salaries are con-
tinued even when through age or accident they are
past work and on their death they pass to their
;

sons, should they have become skilled in their

father's art. Upon the completion of any extra-
ordinary work it is submitted to the patron, and

some honour is at once conferred on the artist, and

his salary increased. under such conditions
It is

that the best art work of the East has always been
produced."
There is, for example, in the India Museum an
engraved jade bowl, on which a family in the employ
of the Emperors of Delhi was engaged for three

generations. In these days when churches are built

by contract and finished to the day or week, it is
difficult to realise the leisurely methods of the older
craftsmen. Do not mistake leisure for laziness ;

25
 KING CRAFTSMEN.
they are totally and entirely different things. The
quality of leisure in old work is one of its greatest
charms, and is almost essential in a work of art.
Haste and haggling have now almost destroyed the
possibility of art, and until they are again eliminated
from the craftsman's work it will not be possible
to have again such work as he once gave to his
fellows. In other words, society must either decide
to do without art, as it mostly does decide at the

present day, or elseit must make up its mind to pay

for artand endow its craftsmen. You cannot both

have art and exploit it.
The royal appreciation of art and craft in the
East at various times is further illustrated by the
existence of kings who themselves practised a craft.
I have collected two or three of these instances,
but have no doubt that many more could be found
by searching the pages of Indian history.
In the Kusa Jataka, it is recorded that Prince
Kusa, not wishing to marry, conceived the idea of
having a beautiful golden image made, and of
promising to marry when a woman of equal beauty
should be found. He summoned the chief smith,
and giving him a quantity of gold, told him to go
and make the image of a woman. In the meanwhile
he himself took more gold, and fashioned it into the
image of a beautiful woman, and this image he had
robed in linen and set in the royal chamber. When

26
 KING CRAFTSMEN.
the goldsmith brought his image, the prince found
fault with it, and sent him to fetch the image placed
in the royal chamber. At first mistaking this image
for a daughter of the gods, he feared to touch it ;

but being sent to fetch it a second time, he brought

it ;
it was placed in a car and sent to the Queen
"
Mother with the message, When I find a woman
like this, I will take her to wife."
This story is no doubt legendary, but shows at
least that at the time of its composition the practise
of a craft was not considered derogatory to the
honour of a prince. A more historical mention of a
royal craftsman is the reference to King Jetthatissa
"
of Ceylon, in the Mahavamsa. He was," says
"
this chronicle, a skilful carver. This monarch,

having carried out several arduous undertakings

in painting and carving, himself taught the art to

many of his subjects. He

sculptured a beautiful
image of the Bodhisatta so perfect that it seemed
as had been wrought by supernatural power
if it ;

and and a state room with

also a throne, a parasol
beautiful work in ivory made for it."
For other instances of royal craftsmanship, we
may turn to the Arabian literature. Sir Richard
Burton, speaking of the conversation between the
fisherman and the Caliph in the tale of Nur-al-din
Ali and the Damsel al-Jalis, says :

"
Most characteristic is this familiarity between

27
 KING CRAFTSMEN.
the greatest man then in the world and his pauper
subject. The fisherman alludes to a practice of
Al-Islam, instituted by Caliph Omar, that all rulers
should work at some handicraft in order to spare
the public treasure. Hence Sultan Mu'Ayyad of
Cairo was a calligrapher who sold his handwriting,
and his example was followed by the Turkish
Sultans Mahmud, Abd-al-Majid and Abd-al-Aziz."*
"
Another royal craftsman is spoken of in The
Three Princes of China "f the Shaykh's indepen-
;

dent point of view is especially noteworthy. The

tale is not, of course, historical, but reflects an idea
which evidently appeared quite reasonable to the
audience.

A certain Sultan fell in love with a Badaw girl

who was with the Shaykh her father
standing
considering his retinue. After returning to his
palace, the Sultan sent for her father, and asked
the girl in The Shaykh, however,
marriage.
"
answered :
O, our Lord the Sultan, I will not give
up my daughter save to one who hath a handicraft
of his own, for verily trade is a defence against
poverty, and folk say : Handicraft an it enrich not

still it veileth (poverty)." The Sultan remonstrated :

'
O, man, I am Sovran and Sultan, and with me
* " Arabian Nights," Vol. II.
t Burton, Supplemental Nights, V. 222.

28
 A CITY REBUILT.
" "
is abundant good but the Shaykh replied,
; O,
king of the age, in king-craft there is no trust."
"
Whereat the Sultan presently summoned the
Shaykh of the mat-makers and learnt from him
the craft of plaiting, and he wove these articles of
various colours, both plain and striped."

So much for princely craftsmen in the East.

One extract from the Sinhalese chronicles will

show how real could be the royal appreciation of
the arts and crafts it is a message from Vijaya
;

Bahu to his father, Parakrama Bahu II. who reigned ,

in the thirteenth century. It relates to the re-

building of a city that had been laid waste by

foreign enemies, and subsequently abandoned
"
altogether. There are now," runs the message,
"
in the city of Pulatthi, palaces, image-houses,
viharas, parivenas, cetiyas, relic-houses, ramparts,
towers, bird-shaped houses, mansions, open halls,
preaching halls, temples of the gods, and the like
buildings, whereof some are yet standing, although
the trees of the forest have grown over and covered
them. Others thereof are fast falling, because that
the pillars thereof are rotten and cannot support
them. Others, alas are bent down with the weight
!

of huge walls split from top to bottom, and are

tumbling down because that there is nothing to
bear them up. Sad, indeed, is it also to see others,

29
 A CITY REBUILT.
unable to stand by reason of decay and weakness,
bending down to their fall day by day, like unto
old men. Some there are with broken ridge poles
and damaged beam ends, and some with roofs
fallen down and the tiles thereof broken. In some
the have slipped through the breaches of the
tiles

decayed roof, and in others only the walls and

pillars remain. Some there are with fallen doors,
and doorposts that have been displaced, and others
with loose staircases and ruined galleries. Of some
buildings there only remain the signs of their
foundations, and in others even the sites cannot be
distinguished. What need is there of further

description This city, which is now so ugly and

?

displeasing to the eye, we purpose to make beautiful

and pleasant. Let the king grant us leave thereto,
and the feast of coronation be held in the great
let

city afterwards." And so, as the chronicle tells us,

"
he did indeed for he gathered together smelters,
;

turners, basket makers, blacksmiths, potters, gold-

smiths, painters, porters, labourers, slaves, out-

castes, skilful bricklayers, masons, carpenters, and

divers workers in stone. And, further he
assembled all sorts of blacksmiths' tools, such
as bellows, sledge-hammers, pincers, and anvils ;

and also numerous sharp saws, adzes, axes,

wood-cleavers, stone-cutters' chisels, knives,
hammers, spades, mats, baskets, and the like ;

30
 FEUDAL CRAFTSMEN IN CEYLON.
all these ... did he send unto his royal
son."*

Let us examine in slightly greater detail the

organisation of the king's craftsmen, that is the

State craftsmen, in Ceylon, as it existed up to the
day on which the British Governor replaced the
Kandyan king. It must be first understood that the
organisation of society was altogether feudal. The
possession of land was the foundation of the king's
right to the services and contributions of the people,
and vice versa. For all land held, service was due
from the tenant to the king, that is to the State.
The lands and services were inseparably associated,
and as a rule descended from father to son in the
same family, and this remained the same even when
the services were bestowed by the king on individuals
or given to religious foundations. There was thus
no free trade in land and every man had his place
;

in the society, and his work. Landholders were

classed in accordance with the services due from
them. The vast majority were cultivators, whose
duty it was to keep the State granaries well supplied ;

others were the soldiers, the musicians, the washer-

men, the servants, the potters, and weavers, and
the craftsmen proper, viz. : the carpenters, gold-

*
Mahavamsa, Ch. LXXXVIIL
 FEUDAL CRAFTSMEN
smiths, masons, ivory carvers, armourers, founders
and painters, altogether perhaps a tenth of the
population. All of these owned service to the king
in respect of the lands they held. The lands
descended in the family from generation to genera-
tion, and were cultivated by the owners. Everyone
was thus directly dependent on the land for his
living. The craftsmen, however, were not serfs, nor

adscriptus gleba, as a tenant had always the right

to refuse service and surrender his land. This,
however, only happened in rare instances, as during
the last king's reign, when too arduous services were
sometimes required. Of temple tenants, Knox re-
marked that their duties in this life were so easy, that
they might expect to suffer for it in the next But !

hereditary social status and landholding went very

much together, and to surrender the family service
land would have been the last thing desired by a
Kandyan craftsman. If, by chance, the succession
failed, this would be remedied by adoption of a

pupil and heir of thesame caste.

The State Craftsmen fell into two groups, those
"
of the Four Workshops " (Pattal Hatara), who
worked always at the palace, and those of the
separate districts, who had to do certain shares of
work at the palace, but were more often at home,
where they had to work for the local officials ;
and
those of the artificers' department (Kottal-badde).

32
 IN CEYLON.
"
The best of the higher craftsmen, those of the Four
Workshops," formed a close, largely hereditary
and the position was highly valued.
corporation,
From number were chosen the foremen of the
their
District Craftsmen (Kottal-badde). The four shops
" "
were known as the Regalia," the Crown," the
" " "
Golden Sword," and the Lion Throne work-
shops respectively but the craftsmen seem to have
;

passed from one to another according to the work

required of them. These families were of considerable
standing, often possessing very valuable landed
property settled upon them by the king on the
occasion of their first arrival from India, if, as was

often the case, they were of Indian origin, or granted

as a reward for subsequent services. The very name
galladda (gam-ladda), by which the superior crafts-
men are often designated, means one who possesses
or holds a village. There are some families of
craftsmen whose history can be traced from at least
the fourteenth century by means of the original and

subsequent grants which they received from the

Sinhalese kings. I give an example of one of these

grants, dated 1665 A.D. :

"
During the reign of His Majesty the mighty
Emperor Raja Simha, ...
as Marukona Ratna
Abharana Vedakaraya reported himself at the
palace, orders were given to make certain pieces of
jewellery required for the royal dress and when
;

33
 FEUDAL CRAFTSMEN
he had made and submitted
these pieces of jewellery
to the great king, he stated that he needed the
Mottuvela Nila-panguve Badavedilla in Pallesiya
Pattuva of Asgiri Korale, in the Disavanaya of
Matale for his maintenance and His Majesty
. . .

. . . did ... in the

year of Saka, 1587,
absolutely grant the high and low lands in Mottuvela
Badavedilla ...
to Marukona Ratna Abharana

Vedakaraya, to be possessed without any disturbance

or hindrance during the existence of the Sun, the
Moon, Kandy and the Mahaveli river."

As another instance of a special grant may be

cited the following charter held by a Kandyan
craftsman :

"
When the king of kings, Sri Sanghabo Sena-
sammata Vikrama Bahu,was reigning in Senkadagala
(Kandy), he ordered on a full moon day of the
twentieth year of his reign, two sheets of cloth,
twenty cubits by nine cubits, to be woven, and
caused Acharilla Dityaya and his son Sivanta
Dityaya to paint thereon the likeness of Buddha
seatjd on a Vajrasana and surrounded by Sakra,
Brahma, and other Devas. On the completion of
painting the two sheets, he ordered the ceremony
of placing pots full of water, and of other rites ;

and on the completion of the Netra Pinkama, his

hands having been washed [ceremonial purification

34
 IN CEYLON.
after painting the eyes of the image, performed by
the king himself, as here, or by a craftsman in royal

costume], he was graciously pleased to bestow on

the two artists, with the object of satisfying them
and to enable them to make offerings to Buddha,
the extent of four amunu, together with the
fields to

high land and trees thereon, as well as the houses

and all other things pertaining thereto . . .

to be held absolutely from generation to

generation.
"
Now know all ye that are concerned, that the
said properties having been bestowed under royal
assent to be enjoyed by these artists, their sons,

grandsons, and their subsequent generations : if

any king, sub-king, courtier, minister, or whatsoever

person were to dispute the right to this badavedilla
[land given to a craftsman for his subsidence], such
person or persons shall be born in the eight hills
successively. .But, on the other hand, if any
. .

person shall confirm and uphold the said gift, he

shall after death be born successively in the six
heavens . . .and after the termination of the
enjoyments of the bliss of these heavens, shall be
born in the kingdom of Ketumati, where he shall
see Maitri Buddha, by whom the law shall be

preached to him, whose holy priesthood he shall

enter into, arahatship, and subsequently Nirvana.
"
In this tenor the royal decree was issued, and

35
 FEUDAL CRAFTSMEN
by command this copperplate Sannas was inscribed
by me, Sanhassivanta Nainarumbha. By the merit
acquired inscribing this, may I be born in the age
of Maitri Buddha."

Besides such grants of land, the king used to

reward individual craftsmen with gifts of cloth,

money, etc., and by the bestowal of honours and

titles.

The District Craftsmen (Kottal-badde\it. Artifi-

cers' Departmentone of the Fourteen Departments
of Public Works under the Kandyan kings) differed
fron those of the Four Workshops in not being
liable to permanent service at the court. Some of
them served in relays for periods of two months at
a time, others worked only for the governors of
districts, and not directly for the court. In certain
of the districts the Governor (Disava) himself held
the office of Kottal-badde Nilame, or Overseer of

Craftsmen, and in this case he usually appointed

from their number a Kottal-badde Vidane, or officer
acting as his lieutenant. In other districts,
two Overseers of Craftsmen were appointed
by the king. It is interesting that on one occasion,
in the seventeenth century, a Dutchman was
appointed Overseer of Craftsmen. He entered the
king's service for the love of a Sinhalese
" "
woman, and was made Courtalbad," which is

36
 IN CEYLON.
chief over all the smiths and carpenters in
Cande Uda."*

The Kottal-badde craftsmen in one district con-

sisted of the following :

I. Seven vaduvo who did carpenters' work for

the king or governor they were usually employed

;

at the royal timber yard.

Five liyana vaduvo, or turners.

Five sittaru, or painters.

Fourteen i-vaduvo, or arrow-makers, who made

bows, arrows, spears, staves, etc., and gauded them
with lac of these men, two worked in the royal
;

armoury.
Fourteen atapattu karayo, who furnished or
executed work, and were
fine principally employed
in ornamenting and inlaying locks, guns, knives,
etc., with gold, silver, or brass ;
two of them worked
in the royal armoury.

Four badallu, or silversmiths, workers in gold,

silver, brass, or copper ;

two of them worked in the

royal armoury.
One gal-vaduva, or mason.

* Robert
Knox, "An Historical Relation of the
Island Ceilon," 1682, p. 181.

37
 FEUDAL CRAFTSMEN
Twenty mul-acari, or blacksmiths, a certain
number of whom, varying according to the exigency
of the service, attended constantly in Kandy, and

erecting workshops near the Disava's house,

executed all kinds of common ironwork, for which
the metal was furnished them.

Eight blacksmiths without regular service lands

such as the foregoing held. These blacksmiths had
to appear before the Disava at New Year with a
knife and scissors each, and were liable to be called
on for work in any time of emergency.
Ten Disava acari, who worked for the Disava
only.
Twenty-two potters, in two divisions, under the
orders of officers of the same caste appointed by
the Disava. The two divisions undertook turns of

duty of one month each in rotation with the potters

of other districts, the turns recurring once in ten
months. When at home in their own district, they
had only to furnish earthenware for the Disava,
for the rest-houses, and for the king or ambassadors
if
they came to the district.

The following may serve as actual examples of

individual craftsmen's tenure :

A goldsmith holding an acre and owing

half
service to the Gadaladeniya Devale (temple) in
"
Ceylon, had to supply a silver ring for the festival

tree," and repair the golden insignia for use at the

38
 IN CEYLON.

perahera (annual festival and procession) ; put up

and decorate booths on the same occasion ; supply
a measure of oil for and give
the Karti festival ;

annually to the two lay officers of the temple, two

silver rings each. These services were commutable
for Rs. 7.35 (nearly ios.).
A blacksmith held land of the same extent, his
services (commutable for Rs. 5.85) were to give iron
utensils for the temple kitchen ;
work as a black-
smith clean the palanquin and cressets for the
;

perahera nail laths

; annually present a pair of
;

scissors and an arecanut-slicer clean the temple ;

yard, and put up and decorate a booth ; give a

measure of oil for the Karti festival and ;
at each
of the four annual festivals to present the lay officers
with an arecanut-slicer each.
It must be understood that materials (such as

iron, charcoal, the smith, gold for the

etc., for

goldsmith, pigments for the painter), and food (and

lodging) were in all such cases provided by the
proprietor for the tenant when working away from
home, whether at court, at the manor house, or at
the temple.
The following is an example of a potter's tenure :

A tenant of the Talgahagoda Vihara (Buddhist

temple) held 4} acres of land. His services (com-
mutable for Rs. 10.35) were "to give at New Year
one piece of pottery ;
for the ceremony of sprinkling

39
 ROYAL BUILDERS
milk, two pots ; one yoke load of pottery on the
I5th of the month of Bat 63 Karti lamps on the
;

I5th of the month

of II four pots and four dishes
;

on the I5th of Durutta for the New Rice (Harvest

Home) festival ; 50 dishes once a year for the
monastery two vases and two jugs to each of the
;

two viharas and to tile the two viharas (when

;

necessary).

For the most part, of course, there was no wage

payment of the state
craftsmen, for they were
otherwise provided for under the admirable land
system I have referred to but in the case of the
;

many religious buildings undertaken by the

Sinhalese kings, it was otherwise, as the king in
these cases always desired to remunerate the
craftsmen himself directly, in order that the meri-
torious work might be his very own, and not

anybody else's. Thus also we read of the builder

King Duttha Gamani, in the second century B. c.,
that when setting about the building of a great
monastery called the Brazen Palace, that
"
The generous Raja, at the very beginning of
the undertaking, laid down eight hundred thousand
pieces of money at each of the four gates, and
announced that on this occasion it was unfitting to
exact unpaid labour setting, therefore, a value on
;

the work performed, he paid in money."

40
 IN CEYLON.

Nearly the later kings were builders, too, and

all

it was in the building of Buddhist temples that

the State craftsmen were chiefly occupied when the

requirements of the court and the armoury had

been met. And on all these occasions the craftsmen
were liberally and specially rewarded. I wish I could

give some adequate idea of the passion for religious

building which possessed the Sinhalese kings, and
of the way in which this stimulated the production

of works and craft. Perhaps I shall best do

of art
this by quoting from a typical temple charter. At
Degaldoruva, in the eighteenth century, the king's
younger brother had a cave temple enlarged, and he
"
caused stone walls to be put up and doors and
windows to be set with keys and bars, and an image
of Buddha of twelve cubits in length to be made
in a reclining posture, and six other images in a
sitting posture to be placed at the head and feet
of the image, and also caused twenty-four Buddha's
images to be depicted on the ceiling and on the
walls within and without, and other workmanship
and paintings to be made thereon and upon the
stone pillars, the roof of the front court to be put

up with beams and rafters, and covered with tiles,

and on the cross walls thereof a representation of
hell and heaven. and having furnished the
. . .

temple with curtains, ceiling cloths, umbrellas,

flags, drums, oboes, etc. . . . His Majesty . . .
 ROYAL BUILDERS.
ordered the ceremony of painting the eyes to be
performed, and His Majesty also furnished all the
and having granted much riches
necessaries thereto,
in clothes,money and other things to the artificers,
the painters and the stone-cutters, His Majesty
received merit and was filled with ecstacy."
One other extract is quoted from a sannasa or
charter [Gangarama Vihara, Kandy] :

"
Kirti Sri Raja Simha . . . caused a vihara
to be made containing stone walls of thirteen cubits
in length, seven in breadth, and eleven in height,
surroanded by stone pillars, and above a roof with
rafters covered with tiles. Within the walls a stone

image of nine cubits in height was made, its

robes beautified with painting of vermilion, its

different members covered with leaves of gold,

painted about with the five colours, and completed
after the enshrinement of bodily relics. In . . .

the year of Saka, 1674 (A.D. 1752), of the month

Poson, and on Monday, the eighth day of the
increase of the moon, under the constellation Hata,

eyes were affixed to the image, accompanied with

great solemnity, rejoicings and excessive offerings,
and the craftsmen were satisfied by appropriate
gifts."*

* A. C. "Gazetteer the Central-

Lawrie, of
Province^ p. 817 (with verbal alterations).

42
 TEMPLE CRAFTSMEN.
The king, the nobles and the people, especially
the craftsmen, were brought into intimate and even
affectionate association on these occasions.
But not all of the craftsmen in Ceylon were
servants of the king or the state directly. Every
religious foundation of importance hadown lands,
its

occupied by husbandmen and craftsmen, who owed

service to the temple, just as the tenants of a royal
manor owed service to the king. Let us examine
a few instances of such tenancies. One of the
goldsmith-tenants of the Dalada Maligava, the great
Buddhist temple in Kandy, for example, held three
acres of land. For this his services, light enough,
were to go to the temple and polish the gold and
silver vessels and implements of the temple during
six days in the year, and to give a nut-slicer and two
silver rings to the lay-chief of the temple every New
Year. When on duty at the temple, the tenant
received his meal three times a day. The blacksmith
tenant of another temple held half an acre, and
owed somewhat harder he was to give iron
service ;

utensils for the kitchen, work as a blacksmith, clean

the palanquins and lamps, nail laths, give a pair of
scissors and a nut-slicer, clean the court-yard and

put up booths for the annual festival, and give a

measure of lamp oil for another annual celebration,
and at each festival to present to the lay officials of
the temple a nut-slicer each. So much, indeed, were

43
 TEMPLE CRAFTSMEN
the crafts bound up with the temples, so much
occupied were the craftsmen, whether royal crafts-
men or temple tenants, in either building, restoring
or supplying the requirements of temples, that the
art was really as distinctively religious as the Gothic
art of the middle ages, and in the same way too,
it was an art for, and understood by, the whole
people.
Similar conditions probably prevailed from the
earliest times. An interesting record of temple
craftsmen is given in the tenth century inscription of
Mahinda The inscrip-
IV., at Mihintale, in Ceylon.
tion describes the administration and organisation
of a well-endowed* Buddhist monastery. The
section treating of craftsmen runs as follows :

"
(There shall be granted) to the chief master-
artisan all that belongs to the guild of artisans at
Bond-vehera to two master-artisans, to eight
;

carvers, and to two bricklayers to (all of) these,

the village Vadu-devagama. To each of the two
workers in wood (shall be assigned) one kiriya (of

land) ; to each of the two master-lapidaries [or

* "
Mahavamsa, Ch. L. And he [Sena I., 1389-
:

1409 A.D.] built,were by a miracle, a great

as it

vihara at Arittha-pabbala, and endowed it with great

possessions, and dedicated it to the Pansakulika
brethren. And he gave to it also royal privileges and
honours, and a great number of keepers for the garden,
and servants and artificers."

44
 IN CEYLON.

goldsmiths ?], three kiriya (of land) ;

to each of the
two blacksmiths, one kiriya (of land) to the lime- ;

burners, the village Sunubol-devagama to the six ;

"
cartmen, the village Dunumugama." Also, to a
"
painter, two kiriya (of land) ;
"to each of the five

potters who supply daily five earthen pots, one

kiriya (of land)."*
Again, in the Jetavanarama Sanskrit inscription
(first half of ninth century), relative to the
administration of another Buddhist monastery, we
"
read [There shall be] clever stone-cutters and
:

skilful carpenters in the village devoted to the work

of [temple] renewal. They all ... shall be experts

in their [respective] work. To each of them shall
be given of one and a half kiri sowing extent]
[in
for their maintenance ... an enclosed piece of
ground. And one hena [or a plot of dry land] shall
be granted to each of them for the purpose of sowing
fine grain. Means of subsistence of the [same]
extent [as is] given to one of these shall be granted
to the officer who superintends work.
Moreover,
when thus conferring maintenance on the latter

person, his work and so forth shall [just] be ascer-

tained, and the name of him [thus] settled [with

a livelihood], as well as his respective duties, shall
be recorded in the register. Those of the five castes
* "
Wickremasinghe, Epigraphia Zeylanica" Vol.
/., p.p III, 112.

45
 TEMPLE CRAFTSMEN
who work within the precincts of the monastery
shall receive [their] work after it has been
apportioned, and they alone shall be answerable
for its excellence [lit. purity]. The limit [of time]
for the completion of [a piece of] work [thus
apportioned] is two months and five days. Blame
[shall be attributed] to the superintendents, the
varikas, and the labourers who do not perform it
according to arrangement. Those who do not avoid
blame .shall be deprived of their share [of
. .

land]."
The craftsmen were provided with all materials,
and probably fed while at work at the monastery,
but received no wages in money their means of ;

subsistence being the portion of land allotted to

each, and cultivated by other members of the
family, and, probably, as at the present day,
by themselves also in times of ploughing, sowing
and harvest. The same conditions prevailed in
mediaeval England in this respect.* This relation
between craft and agriculture is very important
in view of the character of the modern social
problems of the Western craftsman, alluded to in

Mr. Ashbee's foreword.

* See Thorold Roger's " Six Centuries of Work
and Wages" pp. 46, 179, 1 80. To draw any detailed
comparison with the social conditions in mediaeval
Europe would, however interesting, have been beyond
the scope of the present volume.

46
 IN SOUTH INDIA.
Some inscriptions of Raja Raja (A.D. 985-1018)
at the great Tanjore (Tafijavur) temple in Southern

India, give interesting details of craftsmen attached

to the temple, recalling the records of the establish-
ment at Mihintale above referred to. One inscription
refers to the produce of land assigned to temple
servants before the 2gth year of the king's reign.
Besides the lands assigned to a large number of
devadasis (400), there were :

"
For one man belonging to the potters (kusavar)
of the sacred kitchen, one share (of land), and for
ten (other) men half a share each ; altogether, to
the potters of the high street of Surasikhamani, six
shares."
"
To the jewel-stitcher one and a half
. . .

share."
"
For one brazier (kannari), one share."
"
For one master carpenter (taccacarya), one and
a half share, and for two (other) men, one and a
half share ; altogether . . . three shares."
"
For a person who performs the duty of
superintending goldsmiths (kankani tattan), by
selecting one man and letting him do the work, to
. . the superintending goldsmith of the minor
.

treasures of the >

Lord Sri-Raj a(rajad)eva, one
share."*
* "
Hultzsch, South Indian Inscriptions" Vol. II.,
part ///., p. 259.

47
 MANORIAL CRAFTSMEN.
(Also for two other carpenters, three-quarters of
a share each and for four tailors, one and a half
;

share each, and for two other tailors, one share

each).
But besides the royal and religious manors, and
their tenants, craftsmen included, there were also
manors in the possession of chieftains and officials,
held by them either for life or office, or for ever ;

granted in the first instance for public service in peace

or war. So it came about that just as there were
craftsmen working always for the king at court, or
bringing in to court the work done for the king at
home, so at the local chieftain's manor-house were
to be seen craftsmen working for him patiently and

contentedly, receiving only their meals, while their

families cultivated the lands for which service was
due to the chief ; and amongst the tenants of the
chief's demesne, these craftsmen were by no means
the least important or the least honoured.
I give one instance of such a tenant's holding and

services. At Paldeniya, in Ceylon, a tenant held

land of something over an acre in extent for this ;

he "had to pay eightpence annually as a fee to ;

appear twice a year and give a piece of silversmith's

work worth 35. 4d. to work at the manor-house
;

thirty days a year, being supplied with food and

charcoal ;
to accompany the Lord of the Manor on
important occasions twice a year.

48
 VILLAGES OF CRAFTSMEN.
The craftsmen Ceylon were to a great extent
in
associated in villages that is to say, a whole village
;

or manor would be sometimes entirely a village of

craftsmen. In this we trace a survival of old con-
ditions. In the Suci Jataka, for example, we get a
picture of just such a village of craftsmen :

"
The Bodhisatta was born in the kingdom of
Kasi, in a smith's family, and when he grew up
became skilled in the craft. His parents were poor.
Not far from their village was another smith's
village of a thousand houses. The principal smith
of the thousand was a favourite of the king, rich,
and of great substance. . . .
People came from
the villages round to have razors, axes, ploughshares
and goads made."*
In another Jataka, the Alinacitta Jataka, we read
that there was
"
once upon a time a village of carpenters not
far from the city, in which five hundred carpenters
lived. They would go up the river in a vessel, and
enter the forest, where they would shape beams and
planks for house-building, and put together the
frame- work of one-storey and two-storey houses,
numbering all the pieces from the mainpost onwards ;

these then they brought down to the river bank,

and put them all aboard ; then rowing down stream
* " The
Jataka:' Ed. E. B. Cowell, 1895-1908,
No. 387.

49
 VILLAGES OF CRAFTSMEN.

again, they would build houses to order as it was

required of them after which, when they received
;

their wage, they went back again for more materials

for the building, and in this way they made their
livelihood."!
The Pali Jatakas supply us with a considerable
amount of information regarding the position of
craftsmen in early Buddhist times. The most
striking features of the social organisation of the
craftsmen at this time are the association of
:

craftsmen in villages, the hereditary character of

the craft, and the importance of the Elder, or
master-craftsman. These conditions, like so many
other early Buddhist social features, have persisted
in mediaeval and even until modern times in Ceylon,
where we find, for example, smiths' villages and

potters' villages, where all or nearly all the in-

habitants belong to one occupational caste. At the
same time, it is important to distinguish the social
significance of the craftsmen thus associated in
" "
villages, and that of the village craftsman
proper, who isthe sole representative of his calling,
and is the endowed servant of an agricultural
community. In the one case, the purchaser has to
seek the maker of wares in his own home in the ;

other, the craftsman is himself permanently estab-

f Loc. cit., No. 156. For potters, see the Kumbh-

akara Jataka.

50
 SOCIAL STATUS.
lished amongst his patrons. In late mediaeval
Ceylon the two conditions existed side by side.
Besides the craftsmen thus organised in extra-
urban communities of their own, we have, on the
one hand, craftsmen and merchants (principally the
latter) living in the city, in their own streets and
quarters ; and, on the other, craftsmen of no
particular caste, or considered as belonging to

despised castes. Thus, wheelwrights and carriage

builders belonged to the inferior or lesser castes
with which they are classified in the Suttavibhanga,
together with the Candala, Nesada, and Pukkusa
castes (lesser castes, hinajati), while the basket
makers, potters, weavers, leather-workers and
barbers are said to be of the lesser trades (hina
sippa). The distinction in thought between caste
and trade became much less clear in later times ;

in early Buddhist times caste was less defined and

crystalised than it afterwards became, and there
was no division of Sudras so-called.
All workers in wood were comparatively low in
social rank, the joiner, however, naturally much
less so than the workers in cane, as is the case also

at the present day in Ceylon. It should be observed

that it was not handicraft itself that gave a low
social rank to certain groups of craftsmen, but
rather the fact that these groups consisted essentially
of aboriginal non-Aryan races practising crafts that

51
 SOCIAL STATUS.

were known to them before the arrival of the

Aryans (weaving, pottery, basket-making).
It would be a very great mistake, however, to

suppose that the social status of the artist or

craftsman was invariably low. This certainly cannot
have been the case in the finest period of Indian art,
when the national culture found expression at least
as completely in art as in literature or music. As
we have seen, the kammalar in Southern India
claim a social status equal or superior to that of
Brahmans and in Ceylon the position of the
;

superior craftsmen, often the grantees of whole

villages, and served by tenants and villeins of their

own, was, though technically, and as regards the

essential point intermarriage inferior, in other
of

ways considerably superior to that of the European

craftsman at the present day. The skilful and noted
craftsman was a person to be approached with gifts,
and treated with respect on account of his skill and
learning.

Just the same thing is indicated in that interesting

episode related in the Katha-kosa, where a prince
named Amaradatta is described as falling in love
with a beautiful statue, and weeping and complain-
ing to his friend Mitrananda. "At this moment a
native of the place, a merchant, Ratnasagara by
name, came into that temple. The merchant asked,

52
 SOCIAL STATUS.
' '
Why are you two distracted by grief ? MitrS-
nanda told the merchant, though with difficulty,
the case of Amaradatta. The merchant said to
'
himself :
Oh, the might of Cupid triumphs ! There
is in his mind a passion even for a stone image.
Then Mitrananda said to the merchant My lord, :
*

who had this temple made ? Who was the workman

employed on it ? Who had so much artistic skill ?
Did he make this statue by his own artistic invention
only, or did he carve it to represent some person ?

The merchant said I had this :

*

temple made. It
was made by an architect residing in the city of
'
Sopara, named Suradeva.' Mitrananda said : I

will go to that city.' Then Amaradatta said :

'
Without you I cannot support my life.' Then
Mitrananda crossed the sea, and went to the city
of Sopara. There he put on a splendid garment, and,
taking a present in his hand, went to the architect's
house. The architect showed him great regard,
and asked him the cause of his coming. Mitrananda
'
said :I wish to have a temple built in honour of

a god, therefore I have come to you. So show me

'
a model of a temple.' The architect said I made :

the temple in the garden outside Pataliputra this ;

is the model of it.' Mitrananda said Was the :

*

marble statue in that temple devised out of your

own head, or is it the likeness of any lady ?
'
The
'
architect said : The statue is copied from

53
 SOCIAL STATUS.

Ratnamarijari, the daughter of King Matrasena in

Ujjayini, and is not the product of my own artistic
invention.' When Mitrananda heard this, he said :

'

you again in an auspicious moment

'
I will come to ;

and thereupon he journej^ed to Ujjayini."*

The the story, relating the manner in

rest of
which Mitrananda won the fair lady for his friend,
does not concern us here ;
suffice it to say, that in
"
the end Amaradatta made Mitrananda head of
his cabinet, Ratnamanjari was the jewel of his

harem, and the merchant Ratnasagara was

appointed royal merchant."
As regards the organisation of craftsmen in

villages, conditions were not, of course, identical in

mediaeval Ceylon, but they were, and to a large
extent still are, similar in many ways. In 1872, out
of 117 villages in the district of Nuvara Kalaviya,
four were smiths' villages, and five potters' villages'

occupied by persons those castes exclusively

of ;

the extent of these amounted to 8o acres in a total

of 790 acres, f
In the Kandyan provinces, there existed a larger
number of such villages, and also villages wholly or
partly occupied by goldsmiths and other superior

*
Katha-kosa, translated by C. H. Tawney, p. 150.
Service Tenures Commission Report, Colombo,
, p. 487.

54
 KAMMALAR.
craftsmen. There were also whole villages granted
to craftsmen and their descendants for ever, as

bada-vedilla, or means of subsistence. The word

galladda, a designation of craftsmen of the superior
"
division, actually means one who possesses a
"
village a point of much significance in a study
of the economic status of the Indian craftsman.
In Southern India the skilled craftsmen, exclusive,
that is, of potters and weavers, are known as the

kammalar. The following account of these crafts-

men partly based on a paper by Dr. Pulney Andy
is
"
in No. 50, Journal of Indian Art and Industry."
The kammalar are descendants of Aryans who
entered India across the Panjab in early times j

when they were known as Visva or Deva Brahmans

or Deva Kammalar. They spread gradually towards
the south,and thence reached Ceylon, Burma, Siam
and Java. The kammalar claim to have been at
one time spiritual guides and priests to the whole
people, of which position a trace survives in the
5 '

saying, "The kammalan is guru to the world.

They still have their own priests, and do not rely
on Brahmans they also perform priestly rites in
;

connection with the consecration of images. They

both claim and possess various special privileges,
which they have always upheld with much vigour ;

in cases they claim a rank equal to that of

some
Brahmans. They are, or were, learned in the silpa

55
 KAMMALAR.
sastra, or technical works on art in Sanskrit ;
the
priests especially studied these books. But most
they were only, in later times at least, known in
word for word glosses in the vernacular. The
kammalar trace their ancestry to the five sons of

Visvakarma, of whom the first-born, Manu, worked

in iron ; the second, Maya, in wood ;
the third,
Tvastram, in brass, copper, and alloys ;
the fourth,
Silpi, in and the fifth, Visvajna, was a gold
stone ;

and silver smith and jeweller. In former times the

kammalar had their own guilds which protected
their interests but as these institutions gradually
;

declined, they have been driven to seek the aid of

capitalists of other castes, and now they are in a
majority of instances reduced to mere paid work-
men, earning daily wages. The five occupational

sects form one compact community, and are

not mutually exclusive the son of any one may
;

follow any of the five crafts at will. Probably many

individuals practised more than one craft, as is
still the case in Ceylon,* amongst the navandanno,

who correspond in position to the kammalar, and

in many instances are the descendants of kammalar

immigrants. The group of castes corresponding to

the kammalar in Mysore is called Panchvala.
* So
also in North Jaipur, carpenters worked not
only in wood, but in stone, or metal, including gold,
as might be required of them. Col. Hendley, Indian
Jewellery, p. 153.
56
 CHAPTER IV.

STANDARD AND REGULATION.

O OBERT KNOX, whose book, published in 1682,

is still the best written and most interesting
account of Ceylon, gives an amusing account of
the craftsmen, incidentally mentioning an interest-

ing form of regulation whereby to each smith a

monopoly of the work in a special district was
reserved.
" "
These Smiths," he says, take much upon
them, especially those who are the King's Smiths ;

that is, such who live in the King's Towns, and do

his work. They have this Privilege, that each has
a parcel of Towns belonging to them, whom
none but they are to work for. The ordinary work
they do for them is mending their Tools, for which
every man pays to his Smith a certain Rate of Corn
in Harvest time according to ancient Custom. But
if any has work extraordinary, as making new tools

or the like, beside the aforesaid Rate of Corn, he

must pay him for it. In order to this, they come in
an humble manner to the Smith with a Present,
being Rice, Hens, and other sorts of provision, or
a bottle of Rack, desiring him to appoint his time

57
 A *
SMITH'S JURISDICTION.'
when they shall come to have their work done.
Which when he hath appointed them, they come at
the set time and bring both Coals and Irons with
them. The Smith sits very gravely upon his stool,
his Anvil before him, with his left hand towards the
forge, and a little Hammer in his Right. They
themselves who come with their work must blow
the Bellows, and when the Iron is to be beaten with
the great Maul, he holds it, still sitting upon his

Stool, and they must hammer it themselves, he

only with his little Hammer knocking it sometimes
into fashion. And
be anything to be filed, he
if it

makes them go themselves and grind it upon a

Stone, that his labour of filing may be the less ;

and when they have done it as well as they can, he

it again with his file and finisheth it. That
goes over
which makes these Smiths thus stately is because
the Towns People are compelled to go to their own
Smith, and none else. And if they should, that
Smith is liable to pay Damages that should work
for any in another Smith's jurisdiction."*
Of the King's Towns, or Royal Manors in Ceylon,
Knox says also : "In each of these Towns there
is a Smith to make and mend the Tools of them to
whom the King hath granted them, and a Potter to
fit them with earthenware, and a Washer to wash
their Cloaths, and other men to supply what they
*
Cf. Appendix VII.
58
 STANDARD.
have need of. And each one of these hath a piece
of land for this their service, whether it be to the
King or the lord ;
but what they do for the other

People they are paid for. Thus all that have any
Place or Employment under the King, are paid
without any charge to the King."
A special feature of the guild activity has been
alluded to already, in the statement that no
unqualified person could remain in or enter it. It
was, indeed, one of the most important functions
of the guild in India, as in Europe, to maintain the
Standard of quality, both of material and design. A
forlorn trace of this survives in Europe in the hall-
marking of gold and silver ; and even that is not
concerned with quality of design. In other cases
the king or the State became responsible for the

regulation of the craft sometimes in connection with

the necessity for effective means of collecting the
tolls and dues. The principle of Regulation is

recognized in that fascinating and, for the study of

Indian society, all - important law -
book, the
" "
Ordinances of Manu :

"
He who avoids a custom-house, he who buys or
an improper time, or he who makes a false
sells at

statement in enumerating his goods, shall be fined

eight times the amount of duty which he tried to
evade. Let the king fix the rates for the purchase
and sale of allmarketable goods, having duly con-

59
 MAINTENANCE
sidered whence they come, whither they go, how

long they have been kept, the probable profit and

the probable outlay. Once in five nights, or at the
close of each fortnight, let the king publicly settle
the prices of the merchants."

Here we see recognized the important doctrine of

"
the fair price," so striking a feature of the com-

mercial ideas of Mediaeval Europe. The commercial

morality of the individual is also safeguarded :

"
A weaver who has received ten palas of thread,
shall return cloth weighing one pala more he who ;

acts differently shall be compelled to

pay a fine of
twelve panas. All weights and measures
. . .

must be duly marked, and once in six months let

the king re-examine them."

Closely bound up with these arrangements is the

system of taxation, which amounts to what we should
now call an income tax, or more exactly, a royalty,
the due contribution from the trader to the State
which protects him and the king his patron, and
here also we see provision for the estimation of the
fair price :

"
Let the king take one-twentieth of that amount
which men well acquainted with the settlement of
tolls and duties, and skilful in estimating the value

of all kinds of merchandise, may fix as the value for

each saleable commodity."

60
 OF STANDARD.
So also Yajnavalkya, 1360 :

"
A king, having duly corrected the castes,

families, guilds of artisans (sreni), schools and

communities of people that have swerved from the
duty of their caste (sva-dharmat), should place them
in the right path."
Let us examine a few instances of these com-
mercial principles at work in India.
In the time of Chandragupta (3rd cent. B.C.) there
were six Municipal Boards in Pataliputra, of which
the first was entrusted with the superintendence
of everything relating to the industrial arts :
fixing
the rate of wages, and enforcing the use of pure and
sound materials, as well as the performance of a
fair day's work for fair wages. These boards con-
sisted of five members each, and may be regarded
as a development on official lines, of the ordinary

pancayat or committee of five members by which

every caste and trade in India has been accustomed
to regulate its internal affairs from time imme-

morial.* The State regulation of craft appears to

have been connected with the collection of tolls
and revenues, and the two things hung together.
A reference to guilds and regulations is found in
the Ain-i-Akbari, or Institutes of Akbar (sixteenth
century), in the chapter dealing with the duties of
the Kotwal, or City Officer.
* Vincent "
Smith, Early History of India," Ed.
IL, p. 125.
61
 DEGRADATION
"
Out of each class of artificers he shall select
one to be at their head, and appoint another their
broker for buying and selling, and regulate the
business of the class by their reports and they
;

shall regularly furnish him with journals attested

by their respective seals. ... He shall see that
the market prices are moderate, and not suffer

anyone to go out of the city to purchase grain ;

neither shall he allow the rich to buy more than is

necessary for their own consumption."*

To this day the citizens of Srinagar lament the
prosperous days of old, when the trade was not free,
as it is now is.
"
They have a common saying to the effect that
when the taxation went the prosperity of the city
went also, and they explain this by the fact that the
removal of taxation led to the breaking up of what
were practically guilds sanctioned and protected by
the State. When the taxation was removed outsiders
rushed in, and competition at once reduced prices
of art wares. Copper- work, which sold at seven
rupees per seer in the days of taxation, now sells
at three rupees, and this is the case with many other
art wares."
In the days of taxation also :

"
The State exercised a vigorous supervision over
the quality of the raw material and the manufac-
*
Ayeen Akbery, F. Gladwin, 1800.
62
 OF STANDARD.
tured article. In the good days of the shawl- trade
no spurious wool was brought in from Amritsar to
be mixed with the real shawl-wool of Central Asia,
and woe betide the weaver who did bad work or the
silversmith who was too liberal with his alloy. There
is no such supervision nowadays. Competition has
lowered prices, and the real masters of weaving,
silver, papier-mache and copper-work have to bend
to the times and supply their customers with cheap,
inferior Ask an old artist in papier-mache
work.
to show the work which formerly went to Kabul,
and he will show something very different from the
miserable trash which is now sold. But the Pathans
of Kabul paid the price of good work the visitors
;

to the valley want cheap work, and they get it."*

And so the story goes on. Let us take another
case. Says Sir George Bird wood :

"
Formerly, ... a great industry in gold
embroidered shoes flourished at Lucknow. They
were in demand over India, for the native kings
all

of Oudh would not allow the shoemakers to use any

but pure gold wire on them. But when we annexed
the kingdom, all such restrictions were removed,
and the bazaars of Oudh were at once flooded with
the pinchbeck embroidered shoes of Delhi, and the

* Sir "
W. Lawrence, The Valley of Kashmir,"
P- 373- The italics are not in the original.
 FREE TRADE AND
Lucknow shoemakers were swept away for ever by
thebesom of free trade. "t
And thus we see at work the degradation of
standard, which is undermining alike the crafts of
"
the East and of the West. Under British rule,"
"
says Sir George Birdwood, the authority of the
trade guilds in India has necessarily been relaxed,
to the marked detriment of those handicrafts the

perfection of which depends on hereditary processes

and skill." Modern individualism, in fact, whether
" "
we call it Laissez Faire in Manchester, or the
" "
introduction of Free Western Institutions into

India, hesitates to interfere with a man's sacred

individual liberty to make things as badly as he
likes, and to undermine the trade of his fellows on
that basis a basis of competition in cheapness,
not in excellence and the result we know. Surely
;

a strange product of civilization this !

Perhaps it is necessary to explain that in thus

" "
contrasting Free Trade with the status of
" "
protected industries, I do not intend at all to
" "
advocate Protection as commonly understood.
" "
The Protection which is here advocated is the
protection of standard ;
this must be carried out in
most cases not by the taxation of imports, but by the
absolute prohibition of the importation of any goods
whose quality falls below the standard established. The
"
t Industrial Arts of India," II., p. 64.
64
 PROTECTION.

hall-marking of gold and silver is almost the only

survival of this power formerly exercised by the
trade guilds in England, and here it is only quality
of material that is considered, not of design. In
recent times, the principle has been put in practice
in the prohibition of aniline dyes by Kashmir. The

principle, however, requires great extension, if

standard isto be maintained ;

and it is best done

by restoring to the guilds that power of control

which they formerly possessed. For the State to
merely tax, and profit by, the importation of the
" "
inferior goods Protection as ordinarily under-
stood would be quite from the present point
futile

of view. Equally foolish would be the taxation of

goods which for one reason or another can better
be made in another country than one's own. Each
country should excel in its own special productions,
and protect their standard ruthlessly.
 CHAPTER V.

RELIGIOUS IDEAS IN CRAFTSMANSHIP.

FHERE is another kind of provision in Easter]
society tending to secure the maintenance c
standard in the crafts. I allude to the caste systerr
some aspects of which we must consider. Withou
here speaking of the origin and general significanc
of caste, it will suffice to say from our point of viev
that it represents a legal recognition of the natun
division of society into functional groups. Theon
tically, there are four castes only, the Brahmat
or learned caste the Kshattriya, or warriors an
;

statesmen the Vaisya, or traders, cultivators an

;

craftsmen and the Sudra, craftsmen and servant

;

Much and multiplication of cast<

subdivision
has taken place, so that there are large numbers <

widely distributed, but self-contained communiti

in India, whose members do not inter-marry or e;

together. Caste is hereditary, that is to say, evei

man is, and must remain, of the caste into whi<
he is born, and this is true even if he should lea-

the special occupation which is the traditional wo

of his caste. There is a certain connection betwe<

66
 NOBLESSE OBLIGE.
the caste and the guild, that to say, the trade
is

guild consists usually of persons of the same ethnic

and sectarian caste but when the same trade is
;

pursued by men of different castes, as sometimes,

but not often, happens, the guild may include all
without reference to caste. The craftsman has always
his caste, but is not always associated with others
into a guild the guilds are mainly confined to the
;

great polytechnic cities, while the village craftsman

stands alone. Yet even he is not alone, for he is a
member of a great fraternity, the caste ;
and how
much this means to him, it would be difficult to

exaggerate. It means at once his pride and his

duty (dharma). Caste is a system of noblesse oblige ;

each man is born to his ordained work, through
which alone he can spiritually progress. This re-
ligious conception of a man's trade or profession
as the heaven-ordained work of his caste, may
best, perhaps, be likened to the honour of mediaeval
knighthood. For the priest, learning ;
for the king,

excellence in kingcraft ; for the craftsman, skill

and faithfulness for the servant, service. The way
;

and the life are various, but progress is possible

"
alone each in his own way : Better is one's own
duty even without distinction, than the duty of
another, even with excellence in another's duty ;

danger lies." And so it is that for each, culture

comes in life itself, not as a thing separate from life.
 SVA-DHARMA.
Take the Vaisya for example he is to be a grazier
;

or a trader : he must, says Manu :

"
Know the respective value of gems, of pearls,
of coral, of metals, of woven stuffs, of perfume, and
of condiments. He must be acquainted with the
manner of sowing seeds, and of the good and bad
qualities of fields, and he must perfectly know all
measures and weights. Moreover, the excellence
and defects of commodities, the advantages and

disadvantages of different countries, the probable

profit and loss on merchandise, and the means of

properly rearing cattle. He must be acquainted

with the proper wages of servants, with the various
languages of men, with the manner of keeping
goods, and the rules of purchase and sale. Let him
exert himself to the utmost in order to increase his

property in a righteous manner*, and let him

zealously give food to all created beings."
Thus each man had not only an economic, but a
spiritual status in society ;
national righteousness
"
is often described by saying that each man lived
according to the dharma of his caste, down even to
the dancing girl who excelled in the duties of her

calling also."
The doctrine of Karma, the strongest, perhaps, of
all sanctions for morality, has something to do also
*
C/., the saying of the Tamil poetess Auvvai,
"
What is acquired without wrong-doing is wealth."

68
 KARMA.
with craftsmanship. A man's deeds follow him as
a cart follows the ox ; whatsoever a man does will
react upon himself, sooner or later, in this life or
another ;
as a man
sows, so also shall he reap.
These ideas are rather quaintly expressed in some
of the technical books of the craftsmen. Here, for
instance, are some verses from the Mayamataya,
speaking of good and evil craftsmen, and their fate
in this life and in lives to come :

"
Builders that build houses thus, after their

death, will be re-born in a royal family painters, ;

if they make images accordingly, in noble families

;

cunning and skilful builders, though they should

mine, for as they do, they become
die, are friends of
rulers and nobles, such is the old saying of the
sages. One who knows amiss his craft, taking hire
wrongfully, the which wife and children eat and
enjoy, bringing misfortune on the owner of the
house, that builder will fall into hell and suffer
these sayings are in Mayamataya, what remedy can
there be then, O builders ? There are men who
make images Buddha, though knowing naught of
of
their craft ; put no faith in what they say. Builders
and painters both, who know naught of their craft,
when hire is given according to the work accom-
plished, take that money and (leaving their work)
rush home therewith
though they get thousands,
;

there is nothing even for a meal, they have not so

69
 GOOD AND EVIL CRAFTSMEN.
much as a piece of cloth to wear, that is the reward
of past births, as you know dying, they fall into
;

hell and suffer pain a hundred lacs of years

they ;
if

escape they will possess a deformed body, and live in

great distress when born as a man, it will be as
;

a needy builder the painter's eyes will squint

;

look ye, what livelihood can there be for him ?

Builders who know their business well will become

rajas lacking nought, so also cunning painters are
meet to become nobles. Builders and painters

taking money falsely from other men, thereby grow

poor, so ancient sages have declared and shewn ;

doubt not this saying was in the Mayamataya book

of sages lore ; therefore, let builders and painters
study Mayamataya misfortunes ensuing in this
:

world and the next are told of in its stanzas, behold

how excellently."
A few more words may be said as to the crafts-
man's religious conception of his craft.* I do not
refer to the application of the craft to religious ends,
but to the conception of its intrinsic religiousness.
In "pagan" lands, there is no hard line drawn
between the secular and the religious things in life I

religion is not so much a formula, as a way of

looking at things, and so all the work of life may be

a sacrament, may be done as it were unto the Lord.f
*
Appendix VI.
f In this connection, it is interesting to quote from
'
so modern a work as Baha u'llafts Words of Paradise"
70
 VISVAKARMA.
Hindu craftsmen in certain parts of India
" "
worship the implements of their labour at the
Dasahra festival. This Hindu custom has survived
amongst some Muhammadan converts, e.g., the
thavais of Northern India, who worship their tools
at the Id al-gitr, making offerings of sweetmeats
to them.t In Gwalior, in the modern State work-

shops, the workmen prepare models of trains,

machinery, etc., on which they have been engaged
and pay honour Dasahra festival.
to these at the

There isGod of
a the arts and crafts, whose name
Visvakarma, who
'
is isdescribed as the lord of the
arts,the carpenter of the gods, the fashioner of all
ornaments, who formed the celestial chariots of the
deities, on whose craft men subsist, and whom, a
a great and immortal god, they continually worship.'
The Indian craftsmen, or, at least, the most
the following pronouncement : "It is incumbent on
every one of you to engage in some employment such
as arts, trades, and the like. We
have made this,
your occupation, identical with the worship of God,
the True God" Compare with this conception of a
man's life-work the following modern teaching of the
"
Soto School of Buddhists in Japan : Not only the
building of a bridge or the provision of a ferry-boat is
a work of charity, but so are all forms of benefiting life,
commercial and industrial." Rep. Third Int. Con.
Religions, Oxford, 1908, /., pp. 324, 153.
t Arnold, Hindu Survivals among Indian
Muslims, Rep. III. Int. Con. Relig., 1908, /., 319.
 VISVAKARMA.
important guild or caste of craftsmen, claim to be
descended from the five sons of this deity, of whom
one was a blacksmith, the second a carpenter, the
third a founder, the fourth a mason, and the fifth
a goldsmith and the followers of these crafts in
;

Southern India form still one compact community,

We find some curious and suggestive mystical
ideas, notwithout practical applications, associated
with the personality of the craftsman. His work is
regarded rather as a sacred mystery, as a sacrament,
"
than as a secular trade." In illustration of this I

quote an extract from the Srimahavajrabhairava-

tantra, translated from the German version of
Griin \vedel* :

"
The painter must be a good man, no sluggard,
not given to anger, holy, learned, self-controlled,
devout and charitable, free from avarice such
should be his character. The hand of such a painter
may paint on Sura-cloth. Would he attain to
success, then enters the gift of the Sura into him.
He should draw his design in secrecy, after having
laid the cloth quite flat. He may paint if besides
the painter only a sadhaka be present, but not if
a man of the world be looking on."f
* "
Mythologie des Buddhismus," p. 102.
f Interesting, though unfortunately abbreviated,
details of the ritual preparation of the painter or
imager for his work are given by Foucher,
'
L
"1 cono
graphic Bouddhique de /' Inde? //., pp. 7-14.

72
 VISVAKARMA.
The Indian craftsman conceives of his art, not
as the accumulated skill of ages, but as originating
in the divine skill of Visvakarma, and revealed by
him. Beauty, rhythm, proportion, idea have an
absolute existence on an ideal plane, where all who
seek may find. The reality of things exists in the
mind, not in the detail of their appearance to the
eye. Their inward inspiration upon which the
Indian artist is taught to rely, appearing like the

stillsmall voice of a god, that god was conceived of

as Visvakarma. t He may be thought of as that part
of divinity whichconditioned by a special relation
is

to artistic expression or in another way, as the

;

sum total of consciousness, the group soul of the

individual craftsmen of times and places. Thus,
all

king Duttha Gamani having enquired of a master

bricklayer in what form he proposed to build the
"
monument required, it is stated that at that
instant Visvakarma inspired him. The bricklayer,
a golden dish with water, and taking some
filling
water in the palm of his hand, dashed it against
the water in the dish a great globule, like a ball
;

'
of crystal, rose to the surfaceand he said, I will
;

'
construct it in this form.' It is added that the

delighted raja bestowed upon him a suit of clothes

The subject, however, belongs rather to the domains of

art-philosophy and mysticism than to that of the
craftsman, socially considered, f Cf-> Appendix VI.

73
 RHYTHMIC ARCHITECTURE.
worth a thousand pieces, a splendid pair of slippers,
and twelve thousand pieces of money.*
All this is an expression of a religious conception
of life, and we see the working of such ideas in
actual practice. A few years ago a reproduction
was made of a room in a palace belonging to the
Maharaja of Bhavnagar. The head carpenter was
ordered to follow the ancient rules of his craft. As
the work progressed, he observed that the finger
of God was pointing the way, and that accordingly
mistakes were impossible. In support of this, he
quoted the ancient rules of his craft.
"
The breadth of the room should be divided into
twenty-four parts, of which fourteen in the middle
and two at each end should be left blank, while the
remaining two portions should each form windows
or jalis. The space between the plinth and upper
floor should be divided into nine parts, of which
one should be taken up by the base of the pillar,
six parts by the column, one by the capital, and
one by the beam over it. He then added that should
any departure be made from these rules, the ruin
of the architect and death of the owner were sure
to follow."t
The science of house building, says the Brihat
"
Samhita, has come down to us from the. Rishis
(sages), who obtained it from Brahma."
*
Mahavamsa, Ch. "XXX.
t Sir George Watt, Indian Art at Delhi."
74
 A CRAFT RITUAL.
Can we* wonder that a beautiful and dignified
architecture is wrought in such a wise, and can such

conceptions fail to produce serenity and dignity in

life itself ? Under such conditions, the craftsman
is not an individual expressing individual whims,
but a part of the universe, giving expression to
ideals of eternal beauty and unchanging laws, even
as do the trees and flowers whose natural and less

ordered beauty is no less God-given. The old-

fashioned Eastern craftsman speaks with more than
"
a touch of scorn of those who draw after their
own vain imagining," and there is much to justify
his view.

Finally, I give an account of the ceremony of

painting the eyes of an

image, as performed
in Ceylon as illustrating a gorgeous and
beautiful episode in the craftsman's life, and showing
him in the performance of priestly functions. I
omit many details, more fully related in my
"
Mediaeval Sinhalese Art." The ceremony, being the

concluding episode in the construction or redecora-

and
tion of a temple, often occupying several years,
an occasion graced by the presence of the patron of
the work, in many cases the king himself, was an
occasion of general rejoicing and festivity. Crowds
of men and women from neighbouring villages,
dressed in white cloths, and bringing offerings of
arecanut flowers, money, or other gifts to offer to

75
 A CRAFT RITUAL
the new image, or to the artists, found accommoda-
tion intemporary booths. In other booths were
those who sold provisions. A bana maduva, or

preaching hall, would be

erected, and there would
be much reading of sutras or Buddhist sermons.
There would be abundance of white flags, music
and dancing, gossip and edification.
Sometimes there was no royal patron, but the
vihara was erected by the subscriptions and
assistance of the villagers themselves, who dedicated,
with royal permission, small parcels of land for its
maintenance. In one such case we read that the
eager villagers were in such a hurry for their
consecration festival, that they borrowed images
from another temple for the occasion, before their
own were ready. But let us suppose the king had
ordered the temple to be erected by the state
craftsmen of the court and district. The night
before the ceremony the king and officers of the
court, and often the ladies of the royal household,
arrived, and found accommodation in special
pavilions.
Ceremonies began with the recitation of the
Kosala Bimba Varnanava, a legend of the making
of a sandal- wood image of Buddha in his own time.

Upon this followed the elaborate placing of eighty

earthen pots, with offerings to Brahma and Vishnu,
and the erection of altars to the regents of the

76
 IN CEYLON.

eight points of the compass, with suitable offerings.

Altars were also erected for the guardians of the
door, whose images in ivory or wood had already
been set on the jambs of the door of the image
house, and an altar to the guardian of the site, the
genius loci. These guardians of the temple are
conceived of as pure and sweet natural powers,
protectors of the shrine and guardians of the
spiritual atmosphere about it. Within the temple
an altar was erected to Gana Deviyo, and a rag
figure prepared, afterwards to serve
as a scapegoat
" "
to receive the first glance of the newly-painted

eyes. All these arrangements were made by youths

of the craftsman's caste, dressed as Brahmans.
Another man, wearing a red dress, made the offer-
ings, recited mantrams, and circumambulated the
temple sun- wise. Tom-tomming and other music
was kept up continuously.
The final ceremony took place at five a.m., in
memory of Buddha's attainment of enlightenment
at that hour so long ago in Kosala. The eyes of
the image were painted by the king himself, or, in
his absence, by the foreman craftsman in royal
costume. The painter, accompanied by a second
man, robed, but less elaborately,
also and both
with veiled heads, entered the temple, all others

standing aloof. The second man carried the brushes,

black paint, and a mirror. The latter was held

77
 A CRAFT RITUAL
"
before the image to receive its glance." A white
cloth was spread by the village washerman for the

painters to walk on as they passed from door to

image. While the painter put in the eyes, or, in
some cases, separate sclerotics of crystal or other
material were affixed, the second man recited
Sanskrit charms, and held up the mirror. The
ceremony was repeated each image of Buddha
for

or of the gods. Immediately on its completion the

painter veiled his eyes, and thus blindfolded was
led out and away to a vessel of water already
prepared. Here he purified himself by bathing his
head, repeating the Indian formula of water-con-
"
secration, Hail, O ye Ganges, Godavari, Sarasvati,
N armada, Indus, and Kaveri, come and hallow this
water." Then the painter cut the water with his
sword, and the vessel was shattered. The painting
of the eyes was deemed to be so sacramental, so

great a mystery, that such purifications were needed

to ensure immunity from evil that might fall upon
the presumptuous mortal thus establishing a link
'twixt heaven and earth. Returning to the vihara,
the doors were opened. By this time the grey dawn
had passed into day, and the sun was up. The
patron and the foreman stood together on the
threshold facing the people. The craftsman, repeat-

ing Sanskrit charms, sprinkled the people with

water. The patron and the people then made

78
 IN CEYLON.

offerings to the temple and to the craftsmen. The

offerings of
money, cloths, etc., made during a
certain number of days, were set apart as perquisites
of the craftsmen, in addition to the special remunera-
tions already agreed upon, for in the case of
important work, such as temple building, making
of images, etc., payments in goods or money were

agreed upon, in addition to the mere provision of

sustenance during the progress of the work.
After such offerings, the people entered the

temple to lay flowers on the altar and admire

the paintings, with cries of Sadhu. After the festival
had lasted several days, the people and craftsmen
dispersed to their homes, the latter completing their
purification by a pint service the only direct part
in the proceedings taken by Buddhist priests.

Throughout the rest of the ceremony all priestly

offices had been performed by the craftsmen them-

selves, acting as Brahman priests. The whole

ceremony, though, here described in Ceylon, is

essentially Hindu in character, and is typical of the

sacerdotal functions of the Kammalar craftsmen.
It is of necessity, from the nature of their work in

making or repairing images, moreover, that the

right of otherwise belonging only to
entry,
Brahmans, should be given to the craftsmen also,
In some parts of Southern India they claim, and
occasionally possess, a social prestige equal to that

79
 RELIGIOUS ENDOWMENTS.
of Brahmans. Otherwise, they would be classed
"
as good Sudras," whose touch does not defile. It
"
is said in Manu The hand of a craftsman engaged
:

in his art is
always ceremonially pure."
recorded in a Sinhalese grant of the early
It is

twentieth century that after such a ceremony as

that described, the king (the last Kandyan king)
appointed ecclesiastes for the temple service, and
granted lands for its support, offering a palm leaf
charter to the temple by laying it upon the altar.
Of the two manors dedicated, the king said that
one was his mother's, and she joined in the offering.
Then the royal group walked round the temple,
and the king, seeing a bare space of rock, ordered
the charter to be cut on the stone, and this was
done ;
and it is there still.About two months
later the king and his mother and sister visited the
vihara again, and the vizier read aloud the stone
inscription, which was compared by the king with
the original charter, in the presence of the chief

priests, and praising the stone-cutters, he ordered

them be paid from the treasury.
to
And so in the old days religious architecture was
the stronghold and foundation of the arts and
crafts, and both together were fostered by successive

kings, of whom it is said in the chronicle that they

" "
were one with the religion and the people ;
but
what was all that to the Georgian Christian

80
 THEN AND NOW.
Governor ? What did he care for the religion, the
music, or the art of a people so utterly alien to
himself in culture and traditions ? The royal
craftsman found himself unsupported and un-
appreciated and now, like so many other descen-
;

dants of the Indian craftsmen, he is merely an

agriculturist, perhaps even works on a tea estate,
or he lives only to make brass trays and other
pretty toys for passing tourists whose lives and

manners he does not understand, and for whom,

as he well knows by experience, any bungling is

good enough, since they know nought of good or

bad craftsmanship even in their own land, and still
less in his.

And now, instead of the king going in the grey

dawn with his mother and sister to be present at
the consecration of a temple built by his minister
and vizier, we see the Governor, a mere five
years' visitor, ignorant even of the people's language,
much more so of their traditions and their ideals,
as he goes with his English wife and her fashionable

lady friends to open a bazaar in aid of the local

missionary school for the daughters of Kandyan
chiefs. Instead of the self-contained and independent
village community, with its cultivated and forest
lands, and its communal cultivation, there are the
tea and rubber estates, and planters clamouring for
a hut tax to induce the villager to work for them at

81
 CIVILISATION.

profitable rates, rates profitable, that is, to the

canny shareholder away in England and Scotland ;

instead of the king's palace, we see the usual type

of Government building, even uglier than in England,
and a good deal more out of place instead of the
;

king's craftsmen, we see the government clerks,

slaving away for a ten cents bonus for every error
detected in somebody's accounts. O Sacred
Efficiency, what things are done in thy name !

82
 ^CHAPTER VI.

EDUCATION.
"
T HAVE spoken more than once of the
hereditary
craftsman," a phrase justified by the hereditary
fixity of social function under the caste system.
But it is worth while to consider the point in greater
detail. It is often assumed that the skill of the
" "
hereditary craftsman depends upon the direct
inheritance of his father's individual skill. But this
skill is an acquired character, and it is almost

universally agreed by scientists that there is no

such thing as the inheritance of an
acquired
character ;
a man who loses one leg does not have
one-legged children a man who learns to play
;

well on the piano does not transmit that skill nor ;

can the craftsman transmit his acquired capacity

for carving wood or chasing metal. On the other
hand, of course, be supposed that large groups
if it

of craftsmen are descended from a common ancestor

who originally possessed innate artistic genius (a
different thing from actual skill in handicraft), it
may be argued that this capacity is inherited, and

83
 THE HEREDITARY CRAFTSMAN.
this would be the case. Personally, I should be
inclined to attach little value to the likelihood of
the actual existence of such an ethnically superior
race of craftsmen one would think, indeed, that
;

the absence of selection and elimination in an

hereditary caste might lead rather to degeneration
than to a preservation of standard. As a matter of
fact, these considerations are of small weight
all

beside the question of education and environment*

conditions of supreme importance, and implicit in
" "
the expression hereditary craftsman as ordinarily
used. The important facts are these : the young
craftsman is brought up and educated in the actual

workshop, and is the disciple of his father. No

technical education in the world can ever hope to

compensate the craftsman for the loss of these

conditions. In the workshop, technique is learnt
from the beginning, and in relation to real things
and real problems, and primarily by service,
personal attendance on the master. And it is not
only technique that is learnt in the workshop;

there is life itself, that gives to the pupil both

cultureand metaphysics, more essential to art than
technique itself for what use is it to speak well
;

if you have
nothing worth saying ? I have been
struck, in contrast, by the inefficiency of the great
Technical Schools London, the pride of the
in

County Council. Their watchword, like that of the

84
 THE HEREDITARY CRAFTSMAN.
British in the East, is indeed efficiency but this
;

means that the Professor is hauled up before a

committee if he is late in attendance, not that his

personality is a
consideration.* It means, too,
first

that he is expected to be intensely practical, and to

go through some curriculum leading to certificates

and prizes ;
woe betide him if he should waste time
in pupils a metaphysic or teaching
giving to his
them mediaeval romance. Small wonder that the
pupils of these schools have so little to say ; they
cannot, indeed, put more into their work than there
is in themselves. But in speaking of the Eastern
system of craft education, I used the term disciple
advisedly for in the East there is traditionally a
;

*
In this exaltation of administrative ability over
creative gifts, which are much rarer and more precious,
our institutions share the weakness which pervades our
industrial establishments, where the manager or super-
intendent usually gets larger pay and is regarded as
more important than the most expert craftsman. In
both we see the same striving for a certain sort of
and economy of operation, and for the attain-
efficiency
ment of a completely standarised product. This tends
in both cases to the elimination of individuality and
to sterility. I would that there might be dis-
.

played in the administrative offices of every institution

of higher education this testy remark, once made by
an eminent scholar : " You cannot run a university
"
as you would a saw-mill !
Address by Prof. F. L. Nicholls to the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, 1908.
Nature, January i<\th, 1909.

35
 THE HEREDITARY CRAFTSMAN.
peculiar relation of devotion between master and
pupil, and it is thought that the master's secret,
his real inward method, so to say, is best learnt by
the pupil in devoted personal service and so we
;

get a beautiful and affectionate relation between

the apprentice and the master, which is impossible
in the case of the busy professor who attends a
class at a Technical School for a few hours a week,
and at other times, when engaged on real work,
and dealing with real problems, has no connection
with the pupils at all.
The master need not be the boy's father he may ;

be an elder brother, or even unrelated but in any

;

case, once chosen, he is the ideal of the pupil, from

which he never wavers. There are often trade
secrets, simple enough it may be, but valuable as
much in the idea as in the fact ; these the master
reveals to the faithful pupil only after many days,
and when he has proved himself worthy. Devotion
and respect for the teacher remain throughout life ;

I have seen a man of thirty receive wages in the

presence of an elder brother, his teacher, and hand

them to him as the master with the gentlest possible
respect and grace and as gently and delicately
;

they were received, and handed back, waiving the

right to retain and this same elder brother had
;

an aged father, a great craftsman in his day, and

he never returned home with wages without offering

86
 THE APPRENTICE.
them to him
in the same way. I have seen few

things in East or West more suggestive of entire

gentleness than these expressions of reverence for
the teacher. I need not point out what a perfected
instrument for the transmission of a living tradition
such an education forms. And if, to return to the
Technical School of to-day, one may make a
suggestion, it would be this : that supposing the
aim be to train up a generation of skilled and
capable craftsmen, it were better to appoint living
master craftsmen as the permanent servants of the
community, endowed with an inalienable salary, or
better, a house, and demand of them that they
should carry out the public works undertaken by the
community, and that they themselves should keep
apprentices, choosing out of them one to be their
successor in the position of Public Craftsman. Such
a system would do more to produce skilled crafts-
men, and to produce good work, than would twice
the money spent on Technical Schools and on com-
petitive design for great undertakings.*
There are few, if any, places in India where
the traditional methods of instruction are main-
tained in every detail. But a brief account of the

system as surviving in Ceylon, almost to the present

* See A. /. Penty, "Restoration of the Guild
"
System and C. R. Ashbee, " Craftsmanship in
;

Competitive Industry" Campden, 1908.

 THE APPRENTICE.
day, may We may suppose that a
be useful here.
young boy, son of a caste craftsman, has been
apprenticed to, or is the son of a younger brother
of the master and teacher. His attitude is one of
discipleship and deep respect. If not a relation, he
has been brought to the craftsman's home, with
presents of betel leaves and perhaps an offering of
money or cloth, and given into the master's charge.
During he will live with
his years of instruction
and be fed and clothed by his master and teacher,
and when at last his education is complete, be given
the last secrets of the art and perhaps some heirloom
or gift of a design drawn by a famous painter

generations back.
The boy is given first a wooden panel, primed
with a preparation of iron slag, quart sand, coconut-
shell charcoal, tamarind seed, and the leaves of

Eclipta erecta. Upon this panel he learns to draw,

using as pencil a sea urchin spine or a piece of
pointed wood.
It is of interest to note that this method of
instruction is so far practically identical with the
method of drawing on a primed panel, prescribed
by Cennini.*
for beginners
The forms drawn upon the panel are certain

peculiar curves, gradually elaborated into very

complex studies in applied ornament. Drawing
* See translation
by Mrs. Merrifield, London, 1894.

88
 THE APPRENTICE.
from nature is never taught. After the hand and
eye and memory have been trained in the use of
the fundamental curves in this fashion, traditional
ornament, repeating patterns, and the like are

taught, then mythical animals and designs with men

and beasts in them. The pupil is also taught to use
the brush, and assists his master in practical work
in temples, at first by grinding the colours and

general personal service, then by priming the

surfaces, applying a ground colour, and by preparing
and taking care of brushes and pigments, and lastly,
by filling in outlines sketched in by the master for
completion by the pupil. Experience is thus gained
in practical work. There is nothing dilettante about
the young craftsman's education. It begins early
and is exceedingly thorough.
While it is in progress he has, in addition to his
ordinary education, to learn by heart various
Sanskrit works on art, with their meaning. These
technical works, composing what is called the Silpa
"
Sastra, or science of the arts," describe various
kinds of images, the characters of mythical animals,
the measurements of images and buildings, the
kinds of jewellery proper for kings, the proportions
of various tools and utensils.
A point of interest is the extreme simplicity of
the craftsman's tools and methods. The painter's
brushes, for example, are made of the awns of
 SIMILE OF TOOLS.
various grasses, of squirrels' hair, of roots, or fibre,
and he is always able to replace them or modify
them The repousser's tools he makes him-
at need.
self to suit thework in hand, and he does not
hesitate to make a new tool out of an old one for
a special purpose. The value of this simplicity lies
in the fact that the craftsman relies
upon himself
rather than upon his tools, andsame time
at the
is completely master of them, adapting them
exactly to the requirements of the moment. So
with the pigments and mediums. There is no
mystery, and success depends on thoroughness and
patience rather than on any secrets of the trade.
It would be easy to give further details of

technique and methods here, but the purpose of

the present work being rather to portray the
craftsman than to describe his work, the reader is
"
referred for such details to such works as Mediaeval
"
Sinhalese Art," by the present author, Industrial
"
Arts of India," by Sir George Bird wood, Indian
Art at Delhi," by Sir George Watt, and the pages
"
of the Journal of Indian Art and Industry." It
may also be remarked that Mr. Percy Brown,
Director of the School of Art in Lahore, has there
collected a valuable series of exhibits illustrating
the traditional methods of instruction in the various
crafts or until recently, practised in the district.
still,

It is of the utmost importance that further work

90
 LEISURE.

of this kind should be undertaken before it is too

late. While anthropologists and sociologists are
busy studying savage tribes, there is much of the

organized life of the ancient civilizations slipping

away for ever, which it is of far more importance to

study and record.

To conclude with the craftsman himself perhaps :

there nothing more striking about his position in

is

society, whether as a villager, a guildsman, or a

feudal servant than this the assurance of his

position, and the assurance of his purpose and

value. It is only in the absence of anxiety as to the
immediate future, that that quality of leisure so
characteristic of true works of art and craft can

appear in them. The serenity and dignity of his

life are things which we cannot overlook, as Sir

George Birdwood says, if we are rightly to under-

stand the Indian craftsman.
"
He knows nothing of the desperate struggle for
existence which oppresses the life and crushes the

very soul out of the English working man. He has

his assured place, inherited from father to son for a
hundred generations, in the national church and
state organization while Nature provides him with
;

everything to his hand, but the little food and less

clothing he needs, and the simple tools of trade.
.... This at once relieves him from an in-
calculable dead weight of cares, and enables him

91
 ART AND COMMERCE.
to give to his work, which is also a religious function,
that contentment of mind, and leisure, and pride
and pleasure in it for its own sake, which are essential
to all artistic excellence. "f

The craftsman had this leisure for thought, and

even for dreaming, and his economic position made
him secure against oppression or want. He had no
need to accumulate wealth, and we do not find that
the wage asked by the traditional craftsman in

unspoilt districts to-day represents more than a

bare living for self and family.

Toooften we forget that industry, per se, is of

littleor no value to humanity, if the results are
valueless. But the true craftsman will often work
overtime if he is interested. I have had Sinhalese
craftsmen who insisted on working by lamplight far

into the night. But the same craftsmen demand

the right on other occasions tocome and go at their
will, and it would be quite vain to expect any

particular piece of work done within a fixed time.

The artistic and the commercial methods are thus
radically different and the artistic result cannot
;

be attained on commercial lines, nor vice versa.

The current rate of wages for all depended much
more on the general cost of living than on the degree
of skill required for this special craft or the other.

"
f Sir George Birdwood, Industrial Arts of
11
India.
92
 THE ESSENTIALS.
" "
The craft was much more a calling than a trade,
and to this day Sinhalese craftsmen care more for
congenial work, and personal appreciation, than for
money payments. And as we have seen, in the most
typical cases, the craftsman received no money wage
at all, but was repaid in other ways. Many a British
workman would be glad to exchange his money
wage for such security and appreciation as belonged
to the Sinhalese craftsman of a hundred years ago.
Presents, indeed, were expected, even grants of
land, but these \vere for faithfulness and excellence ;

not a payment at so much a yard or so much an

hour for such and such kinds of work. For the work
was not commerce, and it would have been as
art,
idle to demand that a carpet like the Ardebil carpet

should be designed and made at so much per square

foot, as to expect Academy pictures to be done in
the same way ; indeed, I think it would be more
reasonable to sellthe square yard, than to
these by
suppose that the works of the Mediaeval Eastern
craftsman could be valued in such a way.
If now, in conclusion, we endeavour to sum up
the results to which we are led
by this study of the
Indian craftsman, and by a correlation of his position
in society with that of the craftsman in periods of

good production in the Western world, and in other

parts of Asia, we find that no really great traditional
art has ever been produced, except under the

93
 THE ESSENTIALS.
following conditions : Freedom of the craftsman
from anxiety as to his daily bread ; legal protection
of the standard of work ;
his art not exploited for

profit. These are the material conditions ;

even
more important is that spiritual conception of the
which we find expressed in
serious purpose of art,
the work of true craftsmen of whatever age or
place,but perhaps more in India than anywhere
else. In other words, it has only been when the
craftsman has had the right to work, the right to
work faithfully, a right to the due reward of his
labour, and at the same time a conscious or sub-
conscious faith in the social and spiritual significance
of his work, that his art has possessed the elements
of real greatness. And so we can hardly avoid the
conclusion that these will always be conditions
necessary for the production of fine art and craft.

94
 LIST OF APPENDICES.

I. SIR GEORGE BIRDWOOD ON THE

INDIAN VILLAGE POTTER.
II. SIR GEORGE BIRDWOOD ON
MACHINERY AND HANDICRAFT IN
INDIA.
III. WILLIAM MORRIS ON COMMERCIAL
WAR.
IV. E. B. HAVELL ON CRAFTSMEN AND
CULTURE.
V. E. B. HAVELL ON THE OFFICIAL
SUPPRESSION OF INDIAN CRAFTS-
MANSHIP AT THE PRESENT DAY.
VI. LAFCADIO HEARN ON CRAFT GODS IN
JAPAN.
VII. LAFCADIO HEARN ON CRAFT GUILDS
IN JAPAN.
VIII. SER MARCO POLO ON CRAFT GUILDS
IN CHINA.
IX. BHIKKU P. C. JINAVARAVAMSA ON
CRAFTSMEN IN SIAM.
X. MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS IN
ANCIENT INDIA.
XL BOOKS RECOMMENDED TO THE
READER.

95
 APPENDIX I.

SIR GEORGE BIRDWOOD ON THE INDIAN VILLAGE

POTTER.

wheel
'"~pHE Indian potter's is of the simplest
and rudest kind. It is a horizontal fly-wheel,

two or three feet in diameter, loaded heavily with

clay round the rim, and put in motion by the hand ;

and once set spinning, it revolves for five or seven

minutes with a perfectly true and steady motion.
The clay to be moulded is heaped on the centre of
the wheel, and the potter squats down on the ground
before it. A few vigorous turns
and away spins the
wheel, round and round, and still and silent as a
" "
sleeping top, while at once the shapeless heap
of clay begins to grow under the potter's hands
into all sorts of faultless forms of archaic fictile art,

which are carried off to be dried and baked as fast

as they are thrown from the wheel. Any polishing
is done by rubbing the baked jars and pots with a

pebble. There is an immense demand for these

water jars, cooking-pots, and earthen frying-pans
and dishes. The Hindus have a religious prejudice
against using an earthen vessel twice, and generally

97
 THE VILLAGE POTTER.
it is broken after the first pollution, and hence the
demand for common earthenware in all Hindu
families. There is an immense demand also for
painted clay idols, which also are thrown away
every day after being worshipped ; and thus the
potter, in virtue of his calling, is an hereditary
officer in every Indian village. In the Dakhan the
potter's field is just outside the village. Near the
field isa heap of clay, and before it rise two or
three stacks of pots and pans, while the verandah
of his hut is filled with the smaller wares and painted
images of the gods and epic heroes of the Ramayana
and Mahabharata. He has to supply the entire
village community with pitchers and cooking-pans
and jars for storing grain and spices and salt, and
to furnish travellers with any of these vessels they

may require. Also, when the new corn begins to

sprout, he has to take a water-jar to each field for
the use of those engaged in watching the crop. But
he is allowed to make bricks and tiles also, and for
these he is paid, exclusively of his fees, which
amount to between 4 and 5 a year.
Altogether,
he earns between 10 and 12 a year, and is passing
rich with it. He enjoys, beside, the dignity of
certain ceremonial and honorific offices. He bangs
the big drum, and chants the hymns in honour of

Jami, an incarnation of the great goddess Bhavani,

at marriages and at the dowra, or village harvest-
;

Q8
 THE VILLAGE POTTER.
home festivals, he prepares the barbat, or mutton
stew. He is, most useful and
in truth, one of the

respected members of the community, and in the

happy religious organization village life there is no
man happier than the hereditary potter, or kumbar.
"Are not these the conditions under which popular
art and song have everywhere sprung, and which
are everywhere found essential to the preservation
of their pristine purity ? To the Indian land and
village system we owe altogether the hereditary
cunning of the Hindu handicraftsman. It has created
for him simple plenty, and a scheme of democratic

life, in which all are co-ordinate parts of one

undivided and indivisible whole, the provision and
respect due to every man in it being enforced under
the highest religious sanctions, and every calling

perpetuated from father to son by those cardinal

obligations on which the whole hierarchy of
Hinduism hinges. India has undergone more
religious and political revolutions than any other
country in the world but the village communities
;

remain in full municipal vigour all over the

peninsula. Scythian, Greek, Saracen, Afghan,
Mongol and Maratha have come down from the
mountains, and Portugese, Dutch, English, French
and Dane up out of its seas, and set up their
successive dominations in the land ; but the re-

ligious trade union villages have remained as little

99
 THE INDIAN CRAFTSMAN.
affected by their coming and going as a rock by
the rising and falling of the tide and there, at his
;

daily work, has sat the hereditary village potter

amid all these shocks and changes, steadfast and
inchangeable for 3,000 years, Macedonian, Mongol,
Maratha, Portugese, English, French and Dane of
no more account to him than the broken potsherds
lying round his wheel."

1
Industrial Arts of India,' 1880.

100
 APPENDIX II.

SIR GEORGE BIRDWOOD ON MACHINERY AND

HANDICRAFT IN INDIA.

"\A7HAT is chiefly to be dreaded

general is the
introduction of machinery into India. We
are just beginning in Europe to understand what

things may be done by machinery, and what must

be done by hand-work, if art is of the slightest
consideration in the matter.
"
But if, owing to the operation of certain
economic causes, machinery were to be gradually
introduced into India for the manufacture of its
great traditional handicrafts, there would ensue
an industrial revolution which, if not directed by
an intelligent and instructed public opinion and
the prevalence of refined taste, would
general
inevitably throw the traditional arts of the country
into the same confusion of principles, and of their

practical application to the objects of daily

necessity, which has for three generations been the
destruction of decorative art and of middle-class
taste in England and North- Western Europe, and
the United States of America.
"
The social and moral evils of the introduction

of machinery into India are likely to be still greater.

101
 MACHINERY
At present the industries of India are carried on
all over the country, although hand-weaving is

everywhere languishing in the unequal competition

with Manchester and the Presidency Mills. But in
every Indian village all the traditional handicrafts
are still to be found at work.
"
Outside the entrance of the single village street,
on an exposed rise of ground, the hereditary potter
sitsby his wheel moulding the swift revolving clay
by the natural curves of his hands. At the back of
the houses, which form the low, irregular street,
there are two or three looms at work in blue, and
scarlet, and gold, the frames hanging between the
accacia trees, the yellow flowers of which drop fast
on the webs as they are being woven.
"
In the street, the brass and coppersmiths are
hammering away at their pots and pans, and
further down, in the verandah of the rich man's
house, is the jeweller working rupees and gold
mohrs into fair jewellery, gold and silver ear-rings,
and round tires like the moon, bracelets, and
tablets, and nose-rings, and tinkling ornaments for
the feet, taking his designs from the fruit and
flowers around him, or from the traditional form

represented in the paintings and carvings of the

great temple, which rises over the grove of mangoes
and palms at the end of the street above the lotus-
covered village tank.

102
 AND HANDICRAFT.
"
At half-past three or four in the afternoon the
whole street is lighted up by the moving robes of
the women going down to draw water from the

tank, each with two or three water-jars on her

head and so, while they are going and returning
;

in single file, the scene glows like Titian's canvas,

and moves like the stately procession of the Pan-
athenaic frieze.
"
Later, the men drive in the mild grey kine from
the moaning plain, the looms are folded up, the

coppersmiths are silent, the elders gather in the

gate, the lights begin to glimmer in the fast-falling

darkness, the feasting and the music are heard on
every side, and late into the night the songs are

sung from the Ramayana or Mahabharata.

"
The next morning with sunrise, after the simple
oblations and adorations performed in the open air
before the houses, the same day begins again. This
is the daily life going on all over Western India in
the village communities of the Dekhan, among a
people happy manners and frugal
in their simple

way of life, and in the culture derived from the

grand epics of a religion in which they live and
move, and have their daily being, and in which the

highest expression of their literature, art, and

civilization has been stereotyped for 3,000 years.
"
But of late these handicraftsmen, for the sake
of whose works the whole world has been ceaselessly

103
 MACHINERY
pouring its bullion for 3,000 years into India, and
who, for all the marvellous tissue and embroidery
they have wrought, have polluted no rivers,
deformed no pleasing prospects, nor poisoned any
air ; whose skill and individuality the training
of countless generations has developed to the highest

perfection, these hereditary handicraftsmen are

being everywhere gathered from their democratic
village communities in hundreds and thousands into
colossal mills of Bombay, to drudge in gangs for

tempting wages, at manufacturing piece goods, in

competition with Manchester, in the production of
which they are no more intellectually and morally
concerned than the grinder of a barrel organ in the
tunes turned out from it.
"
do not mean to depreciate the proper functions
I

of machines in modern civilization, but machinery

should be the servant and never the master of
men. It cannot minister to the beauty and pleasure
of life, it can only be the slave of life's drudgery ;

and it should be kept rigorously in its place in

India as well as in England.
"
When in England machinery is, by the force
of cultivated taste and opinion, no longer allowed
to intrude into the domain of art manufactures
which belongs exclusively to the trained mind and
hand of individual workmen, wealth will become
more equally diffused throughout society, and the

104
 AND HANDICRAFT.
working classes, through the elevating influence of
their daily work, and the growing respect for their
talent, and skill, and culture will rise at once in
social, civil and political position, raising the whole
country to the highest classes with them and ;

Europe will learn to taste of some of that content

and happiness in life which is to be still found in
the Pagan East, as it was once found in Pagan
Greece and Rome."*

* SIR GEORGE BIRD WOOD Industrial Arts

(' of
India,' 1880.)

105
 APPENDIX III.

WILLIAM MORRIS ON COMMERCIAL WAR.

"TI^OR so far reaching is this curse of commercial

war that no country is safe from its ravages;

the traditions of a thousand years fall before it in a

month it
;
overruns a weak or semi-barbarous
country, and whatsoever romance or pleasure or art
existed there is trodden down in the mire of sordid-
nessand ugliness the Indian or Japanese craftsman
;

may no longer ply his craft leisurely, working a few

hours a day, in producing a maze of strange beauty
on a piece of cloth a steam-engine is set a-going
;

at Manchester, and that victory over nature and a

thousand stubborn difficulties is used for the base
work of producing a sort of plaster of China clay and
shoddy, and the Asiatic worker, if he is not starved
to death outright, as plentifully happens, is driven
himself into a factory to lower the wages of his
Manchester brother worker, and nothing of character
him except, most like, an accumulation of fear
is left

and hatred him unaccountable evil, his

of that to

English master. The South Sea Islander must leave

106
 COMMERCIAL WAR.
his canoe-carving, his sweet rest, and his graceful

dances, and become a slave of a slave :

trousers,
shoddy, rum, missionary and fatal disease he must
swallow all this civilisation in a lump, and neither
himself nor we can help him now till social order
displaces the hideous tyranny of gambling that has
ruined him."*

*
William Morris, " Signs of Change" p. 10.

107
 APPENDIX IV.
E. B. HAVELL ON CRAFTSMANSHIP AND CULTURE.

'""THE important part which craftsmen, more

especially Oriental craftsmen, have always

played in the world's history as missionaries of

civilisation, culture, and religion, is not generally
realised by bookmen. Even at the present day the
Indian craftsman, deeply versed in his Silpa Sastras,
learned in folk-lore and in national epic literature, is,
though excluded from Indian universities or,

rather, on that account far more highly cultured,

intellectually and spiritually, than the average
Indian graduate. In mediaeval times the craftsman's
intellectual influence, being creative and not merely

assimilative, was at least as great as that of the

priest and bookman."*

* E. B. "
Havell, Indian Sculpture and Painting"
.
183.
108
 APPENDIX V.

E. B. HAVELL ON THE OFFICIAL SUPPRESSION OF

INDIAN CRAFTSMANSHIP 'AT THE PRESENT DAY.

"TNDIA still possesses a large body of trained

craftsmen who practise the art of building on
similar principles and produce similar results to
those of the great mediaeval builders of Europe.
They enter no University, for Indian Universities
were founded for supplying material for the official

machinery, and make no provision for either art or

religion. But their ancestors built the Taj, the
shrines of Mount Abu, and countless other master-

pieces ; they constructed the Mogul palaces, public

offices, irrigation works, and everything of practical
utility that the art of building could provide.
"
How does our departmentalism provide for these
? A certain number of
needs to-day young men with
no training either in art or in craft, learn by heart
certain formularies for calculating the maximum
weight which an iron girder will bear, the smallest
dimensions to which a wall can be reduced without
collapsing, the cheapest rate at which a building can
be constructed so as to bring itwithin the annual
departmental budget. When a department has

109
 OFFICIAL SUPPRESSION
settled on paper the plan of the building it wants,
one of these engineers with an archaeological turn of
mind puts on to it a " Gothic " or " Classic " front,
according to departmental taste, and provides a
certain scale of departmental decoration according to

departmental rank and dignity. Then the hereditary

Indian craftsman whose family has practised the art
of building for untold centuries is brought in to
learn the wisdom of the West by copying the
departmental paper patterns. How bad the art
becomes is, perhaps, difficult to be understood by
those to whom an archaeological solecism is more
offensive than an artistic eyesore ;
but it is easy to
explain how wasteful and extravagant the system
really is. To
build one of the latest and perhaps the
best of these archaeological structures in Calcutta, a

large number of Indian caste-builders were em-

ployed. Many of them were both artists and crafts-

men they could design, build, and, carve. The

structural design had been settled for them depart-

mentally, so they had no concern with that. There

was also a considerable amount of ornament to be
carved, but that also had been designed for them in
proper departmental style, which happened to be
Italian Renaissance, so they were not allowed to

attempt that. Other men who had been trained in

the European archaeological style in Bombay were

brought over to copy mechanically the paper pat-

no
 OF INDIAN CRAFTSMEN.
terns prepared for them. These men were paid two

rupees a day each. Now there are at the present

time in the Orissa district, not far from Calcutta,
and famous a
for its splendid native architecture,
considerable number masons and builders who,
of
within the last twenty years, have designed and
carried out architectural decoration comparable with
that of our finest mediaeval building in Europe, and

infinitely more beautiful than the imitation Renais-

sance ornament of the building I have referred to.

The average earning of these men is four annas a

day, or one-eighth of the wages paid for executing

the departmental decoration. They and their fellow-
over India are constantly in want of work,
artists all

fordepartmentalism has no need of their services.

Indian art cries out for bread we give it museums,
;

exhibitions, and archaeology."*

* E. B.
Havelly Nineteenth Century, June, 1907.

in
 APPENDIX VI.
LAFCADIO HEARN ON CRAFT GODS IN CEYLON.
" A NOTHER ancestor worship
development of
the cult of gods presiding over crafts and

callings deserves special study. Unfortunately, we

little informed upon the subject.
are as yet Anciently
thisworship must have been more definitely ordered
and maintained than it is now. Occupations were
hereditary artizans were grouped into guilds
;

perhaps one might even say castes and each guild

or caste then probably had its patron deity. In
some cases the craft-gods may have been ancestors
of Japanese craftsmen; in other cases they were
perhaps of Korean or Chinese origin, ancestral

gods of
immigrant artizans, who brought their
cultswith them to Japan. Not much is known
about them. But it is tolerably safe to assume
that most, if not all of the guilds, were at one
time religiously organised, and that apprentices
were adopted not only in a craft, but into a cult.
There were corporations of weavers, potters, car-
penters, arrow-makers, bow-makers, smiths, boat-
builders and other tradesmen and the past
;
 CRAFT GODS IN JAPAN.

religious organizations of these is suggested by the

fact that certain occupations assume a religious
character even to-day. For example, the carpenter
stillbuilds according to Shinto tradition he dons :

a priestly costume at a certain stage of his work,

performs rites, and chants invocations, and places
the new house under the protection of the gods.
But the occupation of the swordsmith was in old
days the most sacred of the crafts he worked in
:

priestly garb, and practised Shinto rites of purifica-

tion while engaged in the making of a good blade.
Before his smithy was then suspended the rope
of rice straw (shime nawa), which is the oldest

symbol of Shinto ;
none even of his family
might
enter there, or speak to him ;
and he ate only of
food cooked with holy fire."*

"
LAFCADIO HEARN, " Japan," 1905, pp. 138-139.
See also, ceremonies
" for religious performed by
craftsmen, Medieval Sinhalese Art"

"3
 APPENDIX VII.

LAFCADIO HEARN ON CRAFT GUILDS IN JAPAN.

" IN feudal times ... all craftsmen and all

labourers formed guilds and companies and ;

the discipline maintained by those guilds or com-

panies prohibited competition as undertaken for

purely personal advantage. Similar, or nearly
similar forms of organization are maintained by
artizans and labourers to-day and the relation of
;

any outside employer to skilled labour is regulated

by the guild or company in the old communistic
manner. Let us suppose, for instance, that you
wish to have a good house built. For that under-
taking, you will have to deal with a very intelligent
class of skilled labour, for the Japanese house-

carpenter may be ranked with the artist almost as

much as with the artizan. You may apply to a
building company, but, as a general rule, you will
do better by applying to a master-carpenter, who
combines in himself the functions of architect,
contractor, and builder. In any event, you cannot
select and hire workmen ; guild regulations forbid.

114
 GUILDS IN JAPAN.
You can only make your contract and the master-
;

carpenter, when his plans have been approved, will

undertake all the rest purchase and transport of
material, hire of carpenters, plasterers, tilers, mat-
makers, screen-fitters, brass- workers, stone-cutters,
locksmiths and glaziers. For each master-carpenter
represents much more than his own craft-guild :

he has his clients in every trade related to house-

building and house-furnishing, and you must not
dream of trying to interfere with his claims and
privileges. He builds your house according to
contract ; but that isonly the beginning of the
relation. You have really made with him an agree-
ment which you must not break, without good and
sufficient reason, for the rest of your life. Whatever
afterwards may happen any part of your house
to

walls, floor, ceiling, roof, foundation you must

arrange for repairs with him, never with anybody
else. Should the roof leak, for instance, you must
not send for the nearest tiler or tinsmith ;
if the
plaster cracks, you must not send for a plasterer.
The man who built your house holds himself
responsible for its condition, and he is jealous of
that responsibility none but he has the right to
:

send for the plasterer, the roofer, the tinsmith. If

you interfere with that right, you may have some
unpleasant surprises. If you make appeal to the
law against that right, you will find that you can
 GUILDS IN JAPAN.

get no plasterer, carpenter, tiler or plasterer to

work for you on any terms. Compromise is always
possible, but the guilds will resent a needless

appeal to the law. And after these craft-guilds

all,

are usually faithful performers, and well worth

conciliating Apprentices bound to a
. . .

master- workman, were boarded, lodged, clothed,

and even educated by their patron, with whom they
might hope to pass the rest of their lives. But they
were not paid wages until they had learnt the
business or trade of their employer, and were fully

capable of managing a business or workshop of

their own. . . . These paternal and filial relations
between employer and employed have helped to
make life pleasant and labour cheerful and the ;

quality of all industrial production must suffer much

when they disappear."*

* LAFCADIO HEARN, " Japan, an Interpretation"

pp. 440-445.
" "
Note. // is stated in the Indian Trade Journal
for Feb. 19, 1907, that the Japanese, in preparing to
compete with European nations for commercial
prosperity, are showing a distinct reversion to former
ways and methods. Amongst other things, steps were
being taken to reorganise the old Trade Guilds. The
" " "
Trade Journal comments : As the various
guilds grow in power and influence they will be able
to dictate to European or American traders, unless
the latter also enter into combination."

116
 APPENDIX VIII.

SER MARCO POLO ON CRAFT GUILDS IN CHINA.

IT stated in Yule's Marco Polo (1903, 3rd ed.,

is

that in the great city of Kinsay there

II., 186),
"
were twelve guilds of the different crafts. The
document aforesaid [description of the great city of
Kinsay] also went on to state that there were in this
city twelve guilds of the different crafts, and that
each guild had 12,000 houses in the occupation of its
workmen. Each of these houses contains at least
twelve men, whilst some contain 20 and some 40
not that all these are masters, but inclusive of the
journeymen who work under the masters. And yet
all these craftsmen had full occupation, for many
other cities of the kingdom are supplied from this
city with what they require.
"
The document aforesaid also stated that the
number and wealth of the merchants, and the
amount of goods that passed through their hands,
was so enormous that no man could form a just
estimate thereof. And I should have told you with
regard to those masters of the different crafts who
are at the head of such houses as I have mentioned,
that neither they nor their wives ever touch a piece

117
 CRAFT GUILDS IN CHINA.
of work with their own hands, but live as nicely and
delicately as if they were kings and queens. The
wives, indeed, aremost dainty and angelical crea-
tures Moreover, it was an ordinance laid down by
!

the king that every man should follow his father's

business, and no other, no matter if he possessed
100,000 beyants." It is also recorded that there
"
were officers appointed by the king to decide
differences arising between merchants or other
inhabitants of the quarter."

remark the following extract

It is interesting to
from Marco Polo's "I also bequeath
will : . . .

four lire to every guild or fraternity of which I am

a member."

Yule's note on this is as follows :

" '
The word rendered Guilds is Scholarium.' The
crafts at Venice were united in corporations called
Fragliae, or Scholae, each of which had its statutes,
its head, called the gastald, and its place of meeting,
under the patronage of some saint. These acted as
societies of mutual aid, gave dowries to poor girls,
caused masses to be celebrated for deceased mem-
bers, joined in public religious processions, etc., nor
could any craft be exercised except by members of
such a guild." [Roman, I, 370.]

Yule's Marco Polo, ed. 3, p. 72.

118
 APPENDIX IX.

BHIKKU P. C. JINAVARAVAMSA ON CRAFTSMEN OF

SlAM.

A FASCINATING account of Siamese craftsmen

and their
social organization is given by
Bhikku P. Jinavaravamsa, in the Ceylon National
C.
Review for July, 1907. There were ten groups of
and craftsmen organised under one State
artists

Department of Art and Craft. The ten groups

consisted, briefly, of builders, wood-carvers (archi-
tectural), wood-carvers (small work), painters,
imagers, gilders, stucco- workers, turners, repoussers,
and goldsmiths. Twenty-eight other departments
were separately constituted under chiefs or under
one of the ten main departments according to the
king's wishes. Amongst these were founders, puppet
makers, tailors, goldsmiths, enamellers, tanners,
inlayers with mother of pearl, makers of glazed
pottery and tiles, stone-carvers, etc.
"
Just as in mediaeval Europe the art of decorative
painting was taught in the ecclesiastical buildings ;

so here drawing and painting are taught in Buddhist

temples some branches are also taught in palaces.

;

"
There is no such thing as a regular course of
lessons or organized training among the different

119
 CRAFTSMEN OF SIAM.

crafts. Examples are given by the master for the

*
pupil to 'look at and copy.' The master seems to
'

criticise the pupil's work rather than direct him,

and the pupil's endeavour is to imitate the master ;

this the nature of the training. Apprentices are

is

generally the master's own children or those of

relatives or even neighbours the pupils crowd
;

round the work on which the master is engaged,

' ' '
and are told to watch and to try to do the same,'
and are employed in grinding and mixing colours
and paints, and also help in handling the work and
in any other labour connected with it. In this way
I have learnt to do many things from my childhood.
"
The only real school of arts and crafts is the
residence of the head of the Department of Ten
Crafts, where all kinds of work are almost always
going on, and, in cases of working against time, by
night as well as by day. Of course, only such kinds
of work as are portable are done here, or work
which can be done in sections and afterwards put

together in situ, such as a bedstead.

"
When any of the apprentices show aptitude
for any particular craft, he is set to do the simplest
work first, such as painting the ground, filling up
spaces, washing in the sky and water, and finally
tracing the outline of figures and other objects in
the picture illumination and shading are the last
;

stage."

120
 CRAFTSMEN OF SIAM.

The following extracts are given to show the

characteristic methods of the Oriental craftsman in
Siam :

"
In the case of water colour painting on a plaster
surface, the surface is first sized with a decoction
of tamarind seeds and leaves in two or three coats;

the object of this is to neutralize the alkali and to

make the surface firm and non-absorbent.
"
The subject being decided upon (generally a
jataka, or the Ramayana, or some other popular
legend), the master painter takes a selected piece
of bamboo charcoal (or even a rough piece of charred

wood), and proceeds to mark out by zigzag lines

the divisions between successive scenes. Within the
spaces thus marked out he next makes a rough
sketch of the subject, and gradually develops it
into a detailed drawing. Then he, or his best pupils,
outline the figures or design in some dark colour,
often the sediment of the water in which brushes
are washed, with a lining-in brush, inserting all
detail. The figures are then filled in with white
paint, and the ground painted in with appropriate
colours representing sky or water.
earth, The
figures are then finished in colour and detail added
in red, or black, or gold. .The painter's tools
. .

consist merely of some half-a-dozen brushes made

of the hair of cow's ears, bound in a crow or goose
quill, two or three flat brushes made of bark, and

121
 CRAFTSMEN OF SIAM.
* '
a generally one cubit long, and some-
foot-rule
times divided into inches by mere saw-cuts.
44
If the painting be of the nature of a regular

pattern or consist of repeated figures, the artist

resorts to perforated paper patterns. A thick
native-made black paper is used, pieces being joined
together if one is not large
enough. The designer
roughly sketches the pattern on it with a soft
limestone pencil (greyish-white or light-yellow) cut
to the required size and pointed at both ends. If
it is necessary to rub out any lines, the artist uses
his finger, moistened in the mouth, but if a large
area is to be erased, a piece of the same paper, dipped
is used. When the
in water, design is thus completed,
it is lined in in white with a fine brush ; corrections
can be made in black.
"
The stencil thus made is
placed on a cushion
and closely pierced or pricked along the design with
a needle. It is then ready for use. It is laid on the
surface to be decorated,and which has been pre-
pared, and powdered chalk (in a cloth bag of loose
texture) is rubbed or dusted over it, so that the
pattern appears on the prepared surface as a series
of faint dotted lines.
"
A special craft connected with painting is the
art of making transparent pictures for what
*

Europeans call, though incorrectly, shadow

pantomime.' This is a show of moving transparent

122
 CRAFTSMEN OF SIAM.

pictures over a screen illuminated by a strong

bonfire behind. The scenes represent the favourite
Indian drama of Ramayana, and are accompanied
by music and intoned recitation, and sometimes
singing. The method of preparation of these pictures

is very interesting. A cowhide is scraped to the

required thinness (generally about 1-16 inch), evenly
stretched and allowed to dry hard. It is then roughly

shaped oval for a group and long rectangular for

a standing figure the pieces measuring generally
from 2^ to 5 feet in height or diameter. A design is
drawn on native-made black paper, perforated and
transferred as already described, and then outlined
in black upon the hide. Flame kanaka or other
appropriate ornaments or flowers or trees are
introduced to connect together the different pieces
or projecting parts of a figure, so that when the

ground is cut away held together by these

the hide is

connections and hang evenly without

will also

buckling. Sky or other open space is represented

by small even patterns of a very open character
with inconspicuous connections.
"
The hide, after cutting in this way, is appro-
priately coloured bright dyes which
with fast

penetrate the leather, and are fixed by lime-juice

or native vinegar, which help also to brighten the
colour.

123
 CRAFTSMEN OF SIAM.
"
The greatest difficulty is to estimate how much
* '

light will, as they say, eat up the figure for the ;

appearance by the light from

of the figure is altered

behind, some colours being weakened and others

intensified. If, for instance, a human figure is
drawn (generally dark) in good proportion, with
dress and ornament and the colour of hair and skin

correctly represented, the picture will appear badly

proportioned when lit up. The artist must be a
man of great experience, and the worst of it is that
he does not seem able to explain his art nor to set
forth in black and white the proportion of this or
that colour which will absorb or transmit the light
most. It is amusing to see young artists' attempts
at making these apparently simple transparent
pictures, with
thick white paper beautifully
illuminated, but turning out a complete failure when
exhibited. The pictures are held up before the
screen by four pieces of split bamboo just strong
enough for the purpose, and fastened to the picture,
two in front and two behind, the lower ends serving
as handles. The hide is flexible, so that it can be
rolled up round the two sticks. The performer
must be himself a trained dramatic artist and dancer
to music. He acts the scene, as he would on the
stage, with every part of his body except the two
arms, engaged in holding up the picture. He seems
to live in the picture, and is absorbed in the

124
 CRAFTSMEN OF SIAM.

representation he is trying to produce. It is most

amusing to see the artist's attitude and observe the
very intense expression of his face as he performs
and watches the motion of his picture. The same
remarks apply to the puppet-show man described
below.
"
The puppet-shows also deserve some mention.
The construction of moving figures and puppets is
carried to a considerable degree of perfection.
Beautiful little figures, 6 inches to 18 inches high,

representing the characters of the Indian drama of

Ramayana, are made for exhibition at royal
entertainments. They are perfect pieces of
mechanism ;
their very fingers can be moved and
made and they can be made to
to grasp an object,
assume postures expressive of any action or
emotion described in poetry. This is done by
pulling strings which hang down within the clothing,
or within a small tube attached to the lower part
of the figure, with a ring or loop attached to the
end of each, for inserting the fingers of the showman.
The movements are perfectly timed to the music
and recitation or singing.
"
One cannot help being charmed by these
lilliputs, whose dresses are so gorgeous and jewelled
with the minutest detail. Little embroidered
jackets and other pieces of dress, representing the

125
 CRAFTSMEN OF SIAM.

magnificent robes of a Deva or Yakkha, are com-

plete in the smallest particulars. The miniature
jewels are sometimes made of real gold and gems.
"
Such a thing as be only possible
this I believe to
when a man has almost unlimited means, both in
time and money, to devote to his hobby for months
(as was the case with the late and last so-called
'
second king,' whose puppet-show was the most
famous ever called into existence), to complete the
work.
"
artistic taste the Siamese seem to be
In their
guided by an instinctive appreciation of beauty,
rather than a self-conscious striving after it. They
understand form, and especially curves and their
combinations, very well, and use them to advantage.
They understand well the filling of space with
appropriate ornament, so that odd or awkward
spaces become restful and even, or form a contrast
to the more ornamental part of the work, making
it stand out clearly, fulfilling the function of light

and shade in modern work. Composition, or the

proper disposition of spaces is carefully studied
if the criticism one constantly hears passed upon
this or the other work may be called study. The
Siamese artists show accurate judgment of size and
distance, light and level men with such accurate
;

judgment are called ta jang, i.e., eye of an expert.

126
 CRAFTSMEN OF SIAM.
"
An excellent artist is referred to as nakleng
'

(hobbyist, connoisseur, '), and even

well-trained
when the term is applied in the case of bad habits,
as to a connoisseur of good wines or to a gourmet,
it is a complimentary term. It is also applied to
collectors in general. however, understood
It is,

to imply a morally weak man, one who gives way

to passion, but decidedly a jolly good fellow. A
rowdy or immoral man, or one noted for quarrels,
*
is also called nakleng, in a bad sense."

"
Ceylon National Review," No. 4, 1907.

127
K
 APPENDIX X.
MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS IN ANCIENT INDIA.
"
According to Vrihaspati and Yajnavalkhya,
villages, townships, guilds of merchants and
mechanics, communities of Brahmans, and heretics
and other bodies should, when expecting common
danger or when inspired by a desire to properly
discharge their secular and religious duties, or those
relating to their trade or profession, in the case of
mercantile or other guilds, enter into an agreement

among themselves for the protection of their com-

mon interest and the proper performance of their
duties.
"
The duties, specified under their agreements
which these bodies were required to execute in
writing, and which thereby acquired a moral and
legal sanction, were the repair of public halls,
prapas (places where drinking water is supplied to
travellers, wells, cisterns, etc.), temples, tanks and
gardens, the performance of the purificatory rites
for the poor and the destitute, and arrangements
for the cremations of dead paupers, distribution of
gifts among the people desirous of performing
religious acts, and supporting people in time of
famine and distress.

128
 MUNICIPAL INSTITUTIONS.
"
It is these duties which were known as samuha-
krita-sambit, or the course of conduct or duty
established by the public bodies.
'
The samuhas were
;

free to take up other duties

also, provided that they were not inconsistent with,
or antagonistic to, their main duties." *
"
Headmen
(commissioners) residing in towns and
forts, and managing the affairs of Pugas (mercantile
and other guilds), Srenis (bodies of men, following
the same trade or profession), and Ganas (communi-
ties of Brahmans or of other people distinct from

the Srenis) should punish wrongdoers by administer-

ing rebuke or censure, as well as with social ostra-

cism and banishment.
"
And the favour or disfavour thus meted out by
them (to the people), when in accordance with the
precepts of religion and morality, should be accepted
by the king ; for general approval had already been
accorded to whatever these might do (in the
ordinary course of their duties)." f

* Das "Modern Review,"

Quoted by A. C. in
Vol. //., 1907, p. 182, from a paper by Rai Bahadur
Pandit R. C. Shashi, in the Buddhist Text Society's
Journal.
f Translation of a text of Vrihaspati, quoted loc.

tit.

129
 APPENDIX XL
BOOKS RECOMMENDED TO THE READER.

The following books and articles are here

mentioned, and specially recommended to the reader,
as bearing, whether directly or indirectly, upon
"
the subject of The Indian Craftsman " :

"
John Ruskin : Unto This Last."
l<
The Nature of Gothic."
"
William Morris :
Architecture, Industry and
Wealth."
A. J. Penty: "The Restoration of the Guild
System."
"
C. R. Ashbee :
Craftsmanship in Competitive
Industry," 1908.
"
A. K. Coomaraswamy : Mediaeval Sinhalese Art,"

1908.
"
SirGeorge Birdwood : Industrial Arts of India."
E. B. Havell:
" ' "
Indian Administration and Swadeshi,' Nine-
teenth Century, July, 1907.
"
Art, Ethics, and Economics in Hand-loom Weav-
ing," East and West, August, 1907.
"Indian Sculpture and Painting," 1908.

THE END.

130
?tobslha\xi's QgUxiUV SwUs.

Buddhism as Religion : Its Historical Development and

Present- Day Condition in all its Countries.

By H. Hackmann, Lie. Theol. From the German, revised

and enlarged by the Author. Translated by Miss Kemp.
Crown 8vo, ca. 300 pages. Price, 5/- net. In press.

The Masnavi, by Jalal al Din Rumi. Book the Second.

Translated for the time into English Prose, with a
first

Commentary, by C. E. Wilson, B.A. (Lond.), Professor of

Persian University College, London. 2 vols. Vol. I., Transla-
tion Vol. II., Commentary. Price ca. 15/- net.
;

Of the six books of the Masnavi, only the first has hitherto
been translated into English, by the late Sir James Red-
house, but it is not necessary to read the first book in
order to understand the second and succeeding books,
since the whole work is not a systematic and ordered
treatise on Sufiism.

ALWIS, J AS. Descriptive Catalogue of Sanskrit, Pali and

Singhalese Literary Works of Ceylon. Vol. I. (all), 8vo,
dp. xxx., 243. 1870. 9/-

BAYNES, H. The Idea of God and the Moral Sense in the Light
of Language. 8vo, pp. xiii., 239, 104. 1895. 10/6.

BUDDHIST REVIEW, Organ of the Buddhist Society of Great

Britain. Vol. I. now in progress. 4/-

DAWES, F. Six Essays on the Ancients, their Music and

Instruments. I., Chinese, Japanese, Hindoos. 40, pp. 20.
1893- 2/6.

EITEL, Handbook of Chinese Buddhism, being a Sanskrit-

E. J.
Chinese Dictionary, with Vocabularies of Buddhist Terms.
8vo, pp. 231. 1888. 18/-

ERVAD, R. J. MEHERJI RAN A. Genealogy of the Naosari

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GRIFFITHS, R. J., and Rogers, A. In Persia's Golden Days

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KLIENE, CH AS. Anglo-Chinese Calendar, A.D. 1751-2000.

4vo, pp. vi., 500. Half-calf. 1906. 2 2s.

LLOYD, A. Admiral Togo A Biography. 8vo. Illus. 1905.

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2/6. The Praises of Amida. Buddhist Sermons translated

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MASAYOSHI, COUNT. Report on the Adoption of the Gold

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Report on the Port Bellum Financial Administration in
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MAYERS, Fr. W. Treaties between the Empire of China and

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NIZAMI Laili and Majnun. Translated from the Persian by

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SPIEGEL, Fr. VON. Iranian Art. 8vo, pp. 59. 1886. 2/6.
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STEVENS, H. J. Cantonese Apothegms. In Chinese with

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SUBHADRA BHIKSHU. Buddhist Catechism. 8vo, pp. iv., 75.

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TEMPLE, R. C. Dissertation on the Proper Names of the

Panjabis. 8vo, pp. viii., 228. 1883. 3/6.

WESTCOTT, G. H. Kabir and the Kabir Panth. 8vo, pp. vii.,

185. Illus,
" 1907. 3/6.
We have
in the Kabir Panth" an attempt to breck
down the barriers that separate Hindus from Mohammadans.
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thing to Hindu, Mohammadan and Christian Influences.

PROBSTHAIN & Co., Oriental Publishers, 41, Great Russell

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